


'tis the damn season

by tamquams



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alive Noah Czerny, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Baking, Christmas, Die Hard References, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Movie Night, Revenge, Ronan Compliant Language, Sharing a Bed, Snowball Fight, author decided she likes gansey actually, bisexual disaster adam parrish, do not be fooled this fic actually has zero 'tis the damn season vibes, the gangsey's all here, there was only one bed... or was there?, wishing you all a very merry monmouth christmas xoxo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamquams/pseuds/tamquams
Summary: “Can we just pretend none of this ever happened? And when Gansey said I’d have to sleep in your bed I just said ‘yeah, whatever, okay Gansey’ and that was that? Please?”“Hm,” hums Ronan. He thinks for a second, then turns and levels Adam with a look so intense it nearly knocks him flat on his back. “Actually, I have a better idea.”It's kind of about revenge and it's kind of about fake dating, but mostly it's about Gansey being a meddlesome old fool who loves his friends.
Relationships: Noah Czerny/Henry Cheng, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 48
Kudos: 251





	'tis the damn season

**Author's Note:**

> howdy & happy holidays!! i hope you're all doing well and staying safe ♡ this is dedicated to my friends in the violence choosers & stansey alert group chat but i hope you all enjoy!!! ♡♡

Not for the first time in his life, Adam thinks he might actually kill Gansey.

Everything, in Adam’s opinion, is Gansey’s fault. Climate change? Gansey’s fault. The student debt crisis? Gansey’s fault. Adam’s migraine? Gansey’s fault.

The fact that Adam is going to have to share a bed with Ronan Lynch for over a week? Gansey’s. Fucking. Fault.

Adam has half a mind to get back in his shitty car and high-tail it right back to Harvard. Sure, it’s a ten hour drive, and he literally just arrived at Monmouth, but nothing can be worse than _this_. And, judging by the look on Ronan’s face, Adam isn’t the only one who thinks so.

It’s just that it’s _Christmas_. It’s Christmas, and this is Adam’s family, and he’s just started making good memories for all the holidays that he hated as a kid. It’s Christmas, and he drove all the way back to Henrietta in his shitty little car, and Blue and Noah and Henry are going to be here soon, and Adam doesn’t want to leave. He really doesn’t. He just also doesn’t want to be in this situation.

“Gansey, man,” Ronan hisses from the doorway of his bedroom. It’s the first time Adam’s seen him since he drove up to Harvard with Gansey in October, and he looks _good_. Hard, lean, dressed in a fitted black tee and dark jeans. His hair is longer than Adam’s ever seen it, although still practically a buzzcut, and one of his ears is pierced. Adam catches himself wondering vaguely if it’s _the gay ear_ before blinking himself out of his thoughts and stepping further into Monmouth.

“I can sleep on the couch,” suggests Adam carefully, eyeing the burgundy monstrosity against the far wall. When they were in high school, the sofa at Monmouth was worn-out and leather and alarmingly sticky, but it seems that Gansey has redecorated a bit since Adam left for college. Gansey, standing awkwardly near the middle of the room, follows Adam’s gaze and then frowns.

“Sorry, Adam,” he begins, wringing his hands as if in genuine guilt, “but this is an antique couch, and I just don’t know if it would be particularly comfortable to sleep on, let alone that it could survive such use.” Silently, Adam wonders what is the point of buying a couch if you _can’t fucking use it._ “And I would offer to share my bed, but seeing as Jane is visiting as well, I don’t know how comfortable she would be with that set-up. Alas, it seems like your only option is to bunk with Ronan. Ronan, I’m sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier. It must have slipped my mind. Here, as an apology, I will help Adam bring his bags into your room.”

“Gans,” warns Ronan through gritted teeth. 

Adam’s grip on his two duffel bags tightens. “I’m sure there’s another option,” he says quickly, glancing around the cavernous warehouse. “I can — what about Noah’s room?”

Gansey just shakes his head. “Noah and Henry will both be sharing a bed as well. It seems we’re at full capacity.” He takes a few long strides till he’s standing in front of Adam and practically pries a bag out of his hands, but Adam hasn’t given up yet.

“Then maybe I should go see if they’ve got a spare couch at Fox Way—”

“All full for the holidays as well, I’m afraid,” Gansey says, already making his way to Ronan’s room. “I’m sorry, Parrish, but this is just where we are for the moment.” When he reaches the door, Ronan blocks his path, snatching the bag from him.

“Gansey,” says Ronan a third time, voice low and dangerous.

Unintimidated, Gansey just pats Ronan on the chest. “Good man, Ronan. Glad to see you getting into the holiday spirit.” He glances at his watch then, and his face lights up. “Oh! Henry and Jane’s flight should be getting in soon! I must go now, can’t have them waiting at the airport. Would the two of you like to accompany me?”

“No,” Adam and Ronan say in unison.

“Very well,” hums Gansey, unperturbed. “I will see you both later. If Noah comes back, tell him I said to change his sheets before he subjects Henry to the current state of his bedding.” He bustles across the room and straight out the door, still grinning the silly little grin he always adopts when thinking about Blue. 

As soon as the front door is closed, Ronan turns an unreadable gaze on Adam. There’s something different about him now as opposed to back in high school, but Adam can’t quite place it. Is he buffer? More serious? Adam’s unsure, but he knows there’s _something_. Ronan’s still hot, of course. Still unreasonably hot. Not like it matters, though. Adam is over the stupid little high school crush he had on Ronan. He _is_. Especially now that Ronan is looking at him like this, like it’s Adam’s fault that they’re in this unfortunate situation, when Adam is doing everything he can to get them out of it.

“I’m sorry,” Adam says after a second, even though he really isn’t. “I didn’t know — I would have brought a sleeping bag.”

Ronan’s jaw twitches. “Whatever,” he says, which Adam knows is one of Ronan’s signature ways of avoiding the truth without outright lying. He jerks his head and then steps into his bedroom, clearly expecting Adam to follow him.

Adam picks his way across the main room carefully and steps into Ronan’s room, a mysterious sanctuary that he’s only invaded once or twice. The overhead light is off but the curtains are wide open, spilling the pale blue-gray sunlight of winter across the room. It’s messy and chaotic, smelling of body spray and laundry detergent and Ronan, but it isn’t dirty. The bed takes up most of the room, a fluffy king-sized thing that Adam has always coveted, and every flat surface — the desk, the shelves, the dresser — is covered in small, strange trinkets. A bobblehead toy that looks suspiciously like Gansey, the squeaky part of a squeaky toy (sans the toy), a lightbulb that emits a soft green glow despite not being screwed into a light fixture. Ronan watches Adam examine several of the objects and then clears his throat, evidently still annoyed.

Adam’s first bag is sitting in Ronan’s desk chair, so he puts the second bag down on the floor beside the chair gingerly, looking to Ronan for a cue as to whether or not this is a good place for it. Ronan says nothing, just quirks an eyebrow in a way that can only be described as _mockingly_ and yep, Adam is so over him. Ronan may be hot, but he’s too much of an ass for it to matter.

“I can sleep on the floor,” Adam blurts out after several seconds of uncomfortable silence. He isn’t usually this awkward, really, but something about standing in Ronan’s high school bedroom with the knowledge they’re going to be sleeping in the same bed ruins Adam’s social skills. “Like, if I can just get a pillow and a blanket—”

“No,” Ronan cuts him off, crossing his arms. 

“No?” Adam repeats, bemused. “Why not?”

“Why do you hate the idea of sleeping in the same bed as me?” Ronan shoots back. His eyes are calm, almost bored, but the tension in his shoulders gives him away. He’s _nervous_ about something. That’s certainly different; Adam remembers Ronan as reckless, sure, and ill-tempered, but never _nervous._

“What do you mean?” asks Adam incredulously. “I’m just trying to make this easier—”

“Is it because I’m gay?”

“You’re gay?”

Now it’s Ronan’s turn to be confused. “Wait, we were friends for _how long_ and you thought I was _straight_? Jesus, Parrish, hit a guy where it hurts.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam stammers, so off his game it’s just ridiculous, “it’s not like you ever offered me this information—”

Ronan scoffs. “I never told anybody, and Gansey and Noah figured it out just fine.”

“Well, it’s not like I go around just making assumptions about other people’s sexualities—”

“You assumed I was straight!”

“No, I never said that! Don’t put words in my mouth!”

Ronan’s clearly agitated now, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. “Well, if it isn’t the gay thing, what is it?”

“I don’t know!” Adam says in a panic. He doesn’t remember grabbing the back of the desk chair, but he’s gripping it so hard that his knuckles are white. Shaking his head, he unclenches his fists and shakes out his fingers. “I thought you were uncomfortable with the idea!”

Now, Ronan just looks completely baffled. “No. Shit. Why would I be — because you’re straight? That’s fine.”

Adam makes an exasperated noise in the back of his throat. “I’m not straight, you dumbass,” he says, running a sweaty hand through his hair. He wants to leave Monmouth and never return. He wishes he had gone to the airport with Gansey. No, wrong, because he’s mad at Gansey right now, too. God, he can’t even keep his grudges straight anymore. “And I just thought—”

But Ronan interrupts again. “Wait, hang on, let’s back up a second,” he says, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “You’re not straight? Wait, is _that_ why you didn’t want to share a bed? Because you thought _I_ was straight and you were gay and that would be—”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Adam groans, pressing his palms into his eyes until his vision goes white. “I didn’t think you were straight, and I’m not gay, either, what did I say about putting words in my mouth? Jesus fucking Christ.” Ronan is finally quiet now, just watching Adam expectantly, so Adam lowers his hands from his face and continues. “For starters, I’m bisexual. Not straight. Not gay. Let’s get that through your head, yeah? Secondly, I didn’t think you were straight, I just never put any thought into your sexual preferences at all.” This is a blatant lie, but Adam is practiced at such things, and the words fit into his speech perfectly. “Third, I just thought it would be weird for us to share a bed because we never have before, but if you’re fine with it, then okay, we can do that, I guess.” Naturally, he leaves the most important thing unsaid: _Oh, and also, you were kinda my gay awakening or my bi awakening or whatever you wanna call it and I had a monster crush on you for, hm, two solid years, so there’s that?_

They’re both quiet for a few seconds after Adam finishes speaking, and then Ronan pats the bed in an invitation. Adam takes a few steps and then sits down about a foot to Ronan’s side, arms crossed defensively over his stomach. He feels exposed, and he doesn’t like it, but it is a small comfort to know that Ronan is the only witness to his meltdown.

“Sorry, Parrish,” Ronan says gruffly after a few moments’ silence. “I didn’t mean to make you out yourself, there.”

Adam just shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t matter,” he says, although he doesn’t even know if that’s true or not. He blows his hair out of his eyes, and it comes right back down in the same place. “Can we just pretend none of this ever happened? And when Gansey said I’d have to sleep in your bed I just said ‘yeah, whatever, okay Gansey’ and that was that? Please?”

“Hm,” hums Ronan. He thinks for a second, then turns and levels Adam with a look so intense it nearly knocks him flat on his back. “Actually, I have a better idea.”

Adam isn’t sure that he would classify Ronan’s idea as _better_ , exactly, but it’s certainly an idea.

By the time Gansey gets back from the airport, they’ve got it all figured out. The perfect revenge. Something that will make Gansey regret the day that he ever forgot to mention Adam and Ronan would have to be sharing a bed.

They’re going to fake date.

Adam is surprised that Ronan suggests it, honestly, considering Ronan’s whole _I don’t lie_ spiel. When he brings this up, Ronan gets oddly defensive and mutters something about how _he’s_ going to be telling the truth the entire time, whatever that means, and then he swiftly gets back to the matter at hand. Adam wants to think more about the strangeness of this comment, but just then the front door swings open with a bang, and it’s too late. It’s time to put their plan in motion.

Not that they have much of a ‘plan,’ exactly. Really, it boils down to just this: acting absolutely sickeningly in love, just to spite Gansey. And now that Gansey’s home, it’s spite time.

“So, how do you wanna do this?” Adam whispers. They both stand up and Adam’s eyes flicker to the bedroom door and then back to Ronan, who is watching him warily, like he thinks Adam’s about to freak out. In all fairness, Adam _is_ about to freak out, but he doesn’t appreciate being read so thoroughly by Ronan Lynch of all people. “Like, do we just walk out there like _hey Gansey_ —”

“Jesus,” Ronan interrupts. “Shut the fuck up. It’s not that deep. You need to calm down, okay?”

Adam opens his mouth to respond, probably impolitely, but then there’s some shuffling in the main room and Blue Sargent is calling Ronan and Adam’s names, and he just rolls his eyes instead. Ronan takes him by the hand, raises a questioning eyebrow and says, “Speak now or forever hold your peace, Parrish.”

Adam rolls his eyes again, for good measure. “Come on,” he snaps, and he tugs Ronan through the bedroom door.

“Adam!” Blue exclaims. “Ronan! I’m so happy to see—!” She stops in the middle of her sentence, staring open-mouthed at their joined hands. “Oh, what the fuck is _this_?” she yells, smacking Gansey’s bicep. “You didn’t tell me about _this_!”

“Jane?” says Gansey, turning away from where he’s helping with Henry’s bags. He follows Blue’s line of sight and then grins so widely that Adam thinks it has to hurt. “Well, well, well,” remarks Gansey, infinitely more polite than Henry, who just wolf-whistles. “What’s this?”

Ronan’s hand tightens around Adam’s, but he doesn’t speak. When Adam chances a glance at him, Ronan’s frozen, this ridiculous deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face like he’s just realizing what fake dating Adam to spite Gansey entails, exactly. Which is absolutely ridiculous, because _he is the one who suggested it to begin with_.

Adam represses an eye roll and takes the lead easily. “Well, Gansey,” he says, trying his best to actually smile, dammit, not smirk like he’s got a secret, “the… circumstances… of our… sleeping arrangements… forced Ronan and I to confront our, uh, feelings.” He could not sound less smooth if he tried, but that’s okay; Gansey’s entire face lights up like it’s, well, Christmas, and he actually rushes across the room and pulls Adam and Ronan into a hug.

“That’s wonderful news!” he gushes into Adam’s shoulder. His voice is muffled by the fabric of Adam’s shirt, but Gansey makes no move to pull away. “I am so happy for the both of you! If anyone deserves the happiness that comes with true love, it’s you!”

True love? Oh, fuck. Adam flinches slightly, but Gansey doesn’t seem to notice. He squeezes them both around the middle and steps back, leaving Adam reeling. Who the _fuck_ said anything about _true love_? He clutches Ronan’s hand like a lifeline. “Thanks, Gansey,” says Ronan, slowly coming back to himself. He doesn’t sound half as annoyed as he should; in fact, he sounds slightly dazed. “That’s, uh — thanks.”

Blue hip-checks Gansey out of the way and then narrows her eyes at Ronan, giving him a cold once-over. It’s all posturing — there isn’t a person in the room who doesn't know just how deep Blue and Ronan’s love for each other runs — but there’s still something genuinely intimidating in the way she glares up at Ronan and says, “Don’t hurt him.”

Ronan meets her gaze head on, his eyes startlingly open for once. He doesn’t return her glower; he simply says, “I wouldn’t dream of it,” sounding altogether more genuine than the moment calls for.

For a few more seconds, Blue examines him like a specimen beneath a microscope, and then her expression relaxes and she falls back a safe distance. “Okay, well, now that that’s been settled,” she says, like the topic of discussion was what they wanted to watch for movie night rather than _Adam and Ronan having feelings for each other_ , “I’m starving. Do you have any food in this place?”

Gansey frowns momentarily, thinking. “No, I don’t believe we do,” he says. “Nino’s?”

Blue groans theatrically, but she nods her head all the same. “We’re stopping at the store on the way back, though,” she threatens, picking up Gansey’s keys from the desk and tossing them across the room. He catches them easily and swivels toward the door. 

“You guys coming?” Blue arches an eyebrow at them.

Adam nods. He’s over-aware of the fact that he and Ronan are still holding hands, and one of their palms is starting to sweat. Adam isn’t sure whose it is, but he’s distinctly uncomfortable. “Yeah, we’re coming.”

“We’ll take my car,” Ronan adds, unmoving. Adam can feel the unsteady _thump thump thump_ of his pulse where their wrists are pressed together. “We’ll meet you guys there.”

Blue nods and follows Noah and Henry out, shutting the door behind her. The moment they’re alone, Adam releases Ronan’s hand and steps away from him, discreetly wiping his hand on his jeans. He was definitely the one who was sweating. “I regret this already,” he says, more to himself than to Ronan.

Ronan stands stock still where Adam left him, his face impassive. “We don’t have to—” he begins, but Adam cuts him off.

“Oh, no, we definitely have to. No way am I telling them we broke up less than ten minutes later. Or that we were faking it as revenge but gave up because it was too weird.” He shakes out his shoulders, trying and failing to relax. “Nope. You started this, now we’re finishing it.”

“Fine,” says Ronan. His fingers twitch and he clenches his jaw before turning back to his room. “Let me get my jacket.” He disappears through his doorway, and Adam crosses the room and takes his own coat from the hook by the door where he left it. When Ronan reappears, he mumbles an emotionless, “Let’s go,” and they leave Monmouth, locking the door behind them.

The drive to Nino’s is awkward and deafening. Ronan turns his music up so loud that Adam considers getting out at each intersection and walking the rest of the way. He rolls his window down so that the noise has somewhere to go, but he really only succeeds in filling the vehicle with freezing air. Instead of rolling the window back up, though, he just commits to it, leaning his head against the door and letting the frigid December wind cut through his hair and across his chapped lips.

Ronan spends the entire drive alternating between exceeding the speed limit and breaking hard at every stop sign. Adam can’t tell if he’s doing it as a sign of nerves or just to be a shithead, and it’s not like Ronan’s face gives anything away. At one particularly violent stop, Ronan throws out his right arm to keep Adam from lurching forward too far, and Adam’s traitorous heart stops beating for a second. He recovers himself almost immediately, but in a way it’s too late — even after Ronan brings his hand back to the clutch, Adam’s pulse stutters in sync with the hectic pounding of the bass, right up until the moment they pull into the mostly-empty Nino’s parking lot just a few spaces away from the brutally orange Pig.

Adam rolls his window up before Ronan kills the engine, and they sit there in silence for a moment, Adam’s ear ringing. Ronan reaches to open his door but Adam stops him. “Wait,” he says, unsure of what he’s going to say but wanting deeply not to enter the restaurant. “We shouldn’t, um.” He stares out the windshield instead of looking at Ronan, but in his periphery he can see Ronan chewing on his leather bands. “If you’re all sullen and shit when we go inside, they’re gonna ask if we’re fighting or something.”

“Are we fighting?” Ronan asks, voice muffled. Adam finally turns to look at him, brows furrowed, and finds Ronan staring back at him warily. It throws Adam off-balance to know that he makes Ronan nervous; for a moment, he falters for words.

“No?” he finally settles on, sounding entirely too unsure. He clears his throat and tries again, as authoritative a tone as he can muster. “No, we’re not fighting. Why would we be fighting?”

Ronan shrugs, and with his hand still raised to his mouth, it comes across as petulant and immature. “I dunno,” he mumbles, sulky. “Because that’s what we do?”

Adam sighs. It isn’t like Ronan is wrong, really, but still. He isn’t sure he likes that characterization of their relationship. Oh, scratch that; they don’t _have_ a relationship. God, it’s only been half an hour and Adam is already getting too caught up in this. He takes a slow, measured breath. “Well, can we do something else for once?”

“Like what?”

“Like—” Adam breaks off, running a hand through his messy hair. “Like, can’t we be so in love that it’s just disgusting? Can’t we just hold hands and call each other stupid pet names and, I don’t know, commit intolerable acts of PDA until everyone around us is wishing they were never born?”

Ronan’s voice is hoarse when he replies, a beat too late. “Sure, Parrish. We can do that.”

It’s dark by the time they finally head back to Monmouth. It’s a little after six in the evening, winter-black and nearly as cold as the campus Adam left behind in Cambridge, but the beemer is quick to warm up and Adam is considerably less grumpy once he’s got some food in his stomach. Ronan seems to be in better sorts as well, if his driving is anything to go by. There’s less tension in the car now, or maybe the music is just quieter. Either way, Adam is thankful. There’s really only so much he can take in one day.

As they follow the Camaro down Main Street, it starts to snow. The snowflakes are tiny, melting on impact with the BMW’s windshield, and Adam doesn’t know if it’ll stick but his heart rushes at the sight anyway. This is the first year he doesn’t have to worry about biking to work in the snow or his shitty car breaking down on the side of the road. He doesn’t have to worry about how he’s going to get to school, or if his hours are going to get cut due to bad weather, or if he’s going to have to stay at Boyd’s till three in the morning because some idiot doesn’t know how to drive in the snow. For the first time, he gets to experience winter in the way that most of his classmates did as children: with zero responsibilities. It’s both exciting and nerve-wracking; what’s he going to do with all of this free time? Certainly his friends won’t let him spend the entire holiday getting ahead on the next semester’s reading. Is he going to be expected to join snowball fights and movie nights and gift exchanges? He isn’t sure how to celebrate Christmas, not really, not in a way that counts. Everything he knows comes from the one or two holiday specials he’s managed to watch over the years (and something tells him that _The Star Wars Holiday Special_ is not exactly the most reliable of instruction manuals for a Merry Monmouth Christmas). Ronan gets stuck at a red light and there’s actually enough traffic to force him to a stop, and before Adam can stop himself, his mouth is opening.

“I have a question,” Adam says quickly, staring straight ahead. “But you have to promise you won’t laugh at me.”

“I can promise no such thing,” says Ronan solemnly, his hand flexing on the clutch.

Adam rolls his eyes, but continues anyway. “Okay, so, this whole, uh, Christmas thing. What all does it, you know, involve?”

Ronan turns his head toward Adam slowly, a divot appearing between his brows. He looks on the verge of asking a question, but he says nothing, just studies Adam for so long that the light turns green and someone behind them honks. The sound jars Ronan, and he blinks a few times before shifting gears and tearing off through town again.

“It’s easy enough,” he says finally, when they’re only a couple blocks from Monmouth. “There’s decorating, baking, movies, just stuff like that.” He pauses, swallows hard, and adds, “Just follow my lead.”

Adam snorts. “You gonna let me fall, Lynch?” he asks, only half-joking.

Ronan looks over at him, slow and steady. In the dim glow of the dashboard lights, his face is unreadable. “Never.”

There are no festivities planned for that first night, Gansey citing “travel exhaustion” as a viable excuse to lay around and do absolutely nothing. He and Blue lie tangled up on the couch, talking in low voices. Adam’s sure that if he were to go sit with them, they would include him in their conversation, but there’s a sort of easy intimacy between the two of them that automatically pushes away anyone else, and Adam doesn’t want to intrude. Henry and Noah lock themselves in Noah’s room as soon as they get back, and there’s no way in hell Adam’s gonna knock on their door. So that leaves him, once again, with Ronan.

Ronan, who immediately throws himself down on the bed and slips on a pair of headphones. “Make yourself at home,” he says gruffly before selecting a song on his phone and closing his eyes. He turns the volume up on his music so loud that Adam can hear it from the doorway.

Adam sighs and toes off his shoes. He should probably sit down and start in on his anthropology textbook, or maybe pull out his clunky laptop and Google _how to celebrate Christmas_ , but instead he begins to pace. Ronan’s room is cluttered and labyrinthine, completely inconvenient for pacing, but he does it anyway, desperate to burn off even a fraction of his nervous energy. After about five minutes, Ronan flutters one eye open and glares at Adam from the bed.

“You’re creating a draft,” Ronan says dryly, tapping his phone screen to pause his music. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Adam pauses in the middle of the room. “Nothing,” he says, too quickly, too defensively. He turns around to face Ronan and changes the subject before Ronan can ask any more questions. “What’s your favorite Christmas movie?”

For some reason, Ronan frowns. “What?” he asks, but before Adam can repeat himself, Ronan says, “Oh. Die Hard. What’s yours?”

“Die Hard?” Adam repeats. “Is that a Christmas movie?”

Ronan pulls his headphones off and tosses them carelessly on his messy bedside table. “ _Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?_ What the hell, Parrish?” He pushes himself into a sitting position and glares at Adam like he’s been personally offended. “It’s only the greatest Christmas movie of all time.”

“Oh,” is all Adam can think to say for a moment. Hesitantly, he adds, “I’ve never seen it, so—”

“What?” Ronan’s eyes widen. He shakes his head and reaches beneath his bed, searching blindly for a moment before producing a dusty but obviously expensive laptop. “Come here.”

“Are you about to make me watch Die Hard?” Adam asks, even as he sits down on the edge of Ronan’s bed.

Ronan nods, opening the laptop and typing his password in. He moves over until there’s more than enough room on the outside edge of the mattress for Adam to climb in beside him without actually touching Ronan. “No boyfriend of mine is just going to walk around never having watched Die Hard.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “ _Fake_ boyfriend,” he corrects, but it doesn’t carry much weight since he’s slipping his legs beneath Ronan’s covers at the same time. He squirms around until he’s comfortable, leaning back against a pile of pillows that smell almost overwhelmingly like Ronan, and Ronan opens an incognito tab to search up a free movie website.

“I’m pretty sure you can afford to rent this on Amazon or something,” Adam points out as Ronan clicks out of an excessive amount of pop-up advertisements.

Ronan scoffs at that, indignant. “ _Amazon_? Please. I’d rather die than let a penny of my money go into Jeff Bezos’s bank account, thank you very much. Eat the rich.”

“You _are_ the rich.”

Ronan grins, snapping his teeth dangerously close to Adam’s face. “What’cha gonna do about it, then, Parrish?”

Adam can’t think of anything to say to that, so he just elbows Ronan in the side. Ronan elbows him back, and they scuffle briefly, dislodging the laptop from Ronan’s lap. Somehow Ronan ends up pinning him down, breathing heavily. Adam’s chest is heaving just as hard. He stares at Ronan for a second, feeling absolutely unhinged, and then his brain comes back online. What are they _doing_? Is Adam _flirting_ with Ronan Lynch?

“So, how about that movie?” Adam breathes, unable to keep the rasp out of his voice. Ronan nods once, just a jerk of the head, and then climbs off of Adam and retrieves his laptop like nothing has happened.

Adam ends up enjoying the movie. It’s certainly better than any of the other idiotic action films Ronan has coerced him into watching over the years. It’s not particularly believable, but then again, who goes into an action movie looking for plausibility? It’s simply fun to watch, and the experience is inexplicably heightened by the warm presence of Ronan just a few scandalous inches away. For a while, Adam thinks he could fall asleep like this, and then he remembers that he’s supposed to and suddenly he’s wide awake again.

When the end credits finally begin to roll, Ronan snaps the laptop shut and then kicks it to the foot of the bed. Adam makes a mental note to move it before they go to sleep. “So,” Ronan prompts, rolling over onto his side till he’s facing Adam properly. “What did you think?”

Adam turns over too, and the space between them closes almost entirely. Adam’s almost afraid to breathe, because he’s sure he’ll only inhale the carbon dioxide that Ronan is exhaling beside him. “It was good,” says Adam quietly. Probably too quiet for a conversation about Die Hard, of all things. “I liked it.”

Ronan’s face brightens almost imperceptibly. It occurs to Adam that he might be one of the only people in the world whose opinion genuinely matters to Ronan, and he has no idea what to do with this information. Ronan opens his mouth to say something, something snarky or flirty or shitty, who knows, but before he can get a syllable out, the bedroom door is banging open.

“Hey, we’re making — oh, gross, get a room — we’re making hot chocolate, do you guys want any?” Blue wrinkles her nose at them from the doorway. Adam shoots upright, forgetting for a fraction of a second that he’s supposed to be pretending to be in a relationship with Ronan, and then tries to play it off as excitement about hot chocolate. 

“Yeah!” he says, with what he hopes is believable enthusiasm. He trips over one of his own shoes on his way to the door and catches himself on the desk chair. Blue snorts, but Ronan is silent. Adam turns to raise an eyebrow at him. “I’ll bring you a cup,” he says, and then he darts out of the room.

Before Adam can reach Monmouth’s kitchen-bathroom-laundry-room, Blue catches him by the back of his shirt and pulls him till their faces are level. “Are you okay?” she hisses.

“I’m great,” Adam lies. At least, it’s probably a lie. It certainly can’t be the whole truth if he has to stop and think about it. He detaches himself from her grasp and rushes into the kitchen area before she can say another word, effectively ending conversation time.

Sleeping in Ronan’s bed is a lot less awkward than Adam expects, namely because Ronan isn’t around that first night.

After everyone goes to bed, Adam takes a quick shower and then dresses in his pajamas. He enters Ronan’s room, trying to figure out what exactly he can say to make the situation less uncomfortable, just to discover that Ronan has left for the time being. There’s no note, no explanation; just an empty bed and a strange, almost disheartening silence. Something like disappointment settles in Adam’s abdomen and he tells himself to get a grip, because it wasn’t like he really wanted to share a bed with Ronan anyway, but emotional regulation has always been an uphill battle for him. He presses his face into a pillow and drifts off into restless, anxious sleep.

He wakes up nearly once an hour, and it isn’t until almost four in the morning that Ronan makes an appearance: he’s slipping through the bedroom door, fully dressed, smelling like fresh air and burnt rubber. He doesn’t make a sound as he closes the door and takes off his shoes, his jacket, his belt. Adam speaks before Ronan can undress any further.

“The hell have you been?” Adam mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. He pulls the comforter tighter around his shoulders.

The look that Ronan shoots him is equal parts alarmed and pained. “Out,” he whispers simply, shrugging off his shirt. Adam immediately casts his eyes skyward. “Go back to sleep.”

“Fine,” says Adam, more out of exhaustion than obedience. He falls back to sleep immediately, and he doesn’t wake up again until it’s properly morning.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Ronan says when Adam groans and rolls over. Pale winter sunshine is breaking through the window and casting the room in a dreamy silver glow. When Adam lifts his head, Ronan is leaning against the doorframe, arms folded over his chest. He doesn’t look like he got much sleep last night — or any at all, really — but he sort of always looks like that. “Rise and shine.”

Adam blinks, slow and unimpressed. “Do you ever sleep?” he grumbles.

Ronan huffs out something like a laugh. One of his hands reaches around behind him till he’s clutching the doorknob. “Get dressed,” he says, opening the door slowly. “We’re picking out a Christmas tree today.” He backs out of the room, avoiding Adam’s question so effectively he ends up answering it, anyway.

The Christmas tree farm is a forty-five minute drive away. Adam offers to drive, and Ronan tells him that it will be a cold day in hell before he gets behind the wheel of the BMW. They bicker over the music and the heat and a thousand other things, none of which are consequential in the slightest. It’s unfamiliar and entirely too domestic, and Adam enjoys every second of it. He wishes they could just spend the day driving, Christmas trees be damned, but all too soon they pull into the gravelly driveway of the tree farm and Ronan is putting the BMW in park.

“Got your relationship goggles on, Parrish?” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt and letting it snap back into place.

Adam rolls his eyes and pulls his denim jacket up over his sweater. “Come on, Lynch, let’s be disgusting.” They get out of the car and meet their friends where they’re still clambering out of the Pig.

Ronan’s improved on his fake-relationship skills in the last day or so; he immediately comes up behind Adam and rests his chin on Adam’s shoulder, draping his body over Adam’s. Adam wants to find it strange or unwelcome, but really all he can think is _oh, warm_. His mutinous body wants Ronan’s arms wrapped around it and as if on cue, Ronan complies with Adam’s unspoken wish, snaking his arms around Adam’s stomach as if this is completely normal. The hesitance in his movements is invisible to the naked eye; Adam only knows it’s there because he can feel it, even through the jacket and the sweater and the old t-shirt. He says nothing as Ronan envelops him, just makes a physical effort not to lean back into it and meets Blue’s eyes squarely.

“You two are so gross,” says Blue, even as Gansey pulls her into his jacket. Noah shuts the car door and then grins lopsidedly at Adam and Ronan.

“I think they’re cute,” he says, and the rest of the group groans. When he doesn’t think anyone else is looking, Henry shoots them a thumbs-up.

Gansey whispers something in Blue’s ear and then stands up straight and grins at his friends. “Okay, gang,” he says, kingly and authoritative. “Let’s pick ourselves a Christmas tree.”

Picking a Christmas tree turns out to be unreasonably difficult. It seems that everyone’s tree opinions differ magnificently; Gansey likes tall, lush trees that cost more than Adam gets paid in a month; Ronan likes scraggly Charlie Brown trees, the worse condition they’re in the better; Henry fights valiantly for a fake tree, because they come in different colors and require less upkeep; Blue thinks they should just decorate one of the enormous evergreens out in the field behind Monmouth; Noah is adamant that they should be playing hide-and-seek while they shop. Adam, personally, doesn’t care what they choose, as long as they can leave soon. It’s fucking cold.

As exasperating as he is, though, Ronan turns out to be good at faking a relationship. Like, scary good. He knows all the perfect moments to take Adam’s hand or pull him over by a belt loop to whisper in his ear. At one point, he brings Adam’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles, an act that makes Blue pretend to gag and Adam’s breath hitch audibly. Their eyes meet briefly and Adam notices the blush creeping up Ronan’s cheeks, knows his own face probably matches. It’s so unbelievably, unbearably tender that Adam can’t even form a coherent sentence; he just intertwines their fingers and returns to inspecting the Douglas fir in front of him. While Adam is still attempting to regulate his breathing, Ronan runs the pad of his thumb over Adam’s knuckles, and Adam nearly melts under the touch.

Everybody ends up giving in to Gansey’s choice eventually, ready to get out of the cold, and it takes all six of them to secure the tree to the hood of the Pig, although Adam does most of the work. Ronan buys a hot chocolate before they leave and then insists on sharing it with Adam, who can’t refuse in front of the others even on the grounds that he doesn’t like people buying him things. He eats all of the whipped cream off the top vindictively before realizing that was probably Ronan’s intention, and then tries to take Ronan’s keys in retaliation. Ronan easily intercepts his hand and wraps it in his own instead, so smooth that it makes Adam blush bright pink. After that, he just angrily passes the hot chocolate back and forth with Ronan and plots his revenge. They get back in their cars and head back to Henrietta, where they’re supposed to grab a late lunch at 300 Fox Way.

“You’re good at this,” Adam says, accusatory, a few minutes after they merge onto the interstate. He shrugs off his outermost layer and settles back against the passenger’s seat, arms folded across his chest.

Ronan snorts. “Are you complaining about me being a good boyfriend, Parrish?” 

“A good _fake_ boyfriend,” grumbles Adam.

Ronan shakes his head. “I’m not gonna apologize for being a good boyfriend,” he says, like Adam hadn’t said anything at all. “You just gotta up your game, dude.”

“Up my game?” repeats Adam incredulously. “This isn’t a competition.”

“Isn’t it?”

Adam pauses. _This is about spiting Gansey_ , he tries to remind himself, but it’s no use. Ronan’s challenge has already burrowed too far beneath Adam’s skin. If Adam has one toxic trait — he has many, really, but that’s not the point here — it’s that he can be… competitive. Over competitive, maybe. Kind of scary when it comes to competitions, actually. And he knows Ronan is pretty much the same way.

“You really wanna do this, Lynch?” he says, even though he knows they’ve both made up their minds. He tries and fails to fight off a smile, meeting Ronan’s eye over the center console. 

Ronan’s face lights up. “You know I do.”

“Fine,” says Adam. “Have it your way. But don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

With the stakes raised, Adam starts putting in a lot more work for the whole _fake relationship_ thing.

When they pull up in front of 300 Fox Way, he throws himself out of the car before it’s even stopped so that he can open the door for Ronan. Ronan takes his hand and leads him down the walkway, then twirls him around once they’re on the porch waiting for the door to open. Unsurprisingly, they’ve arrived before Gansey and the others, but Maura doesn’t bat an eye at this. Odds are, she saw it coming. She ushers them inside and then hugs them both, which proves to be slightly more challenging than it should, because neither Adam nor Ronan will let go of the other’s hand. Maura glances at their joined hands but says nothing, probably having seen that coming as well. When she tries to direct them into the reading room to wait for the rest of their party, Adam insists on helping to prepare for lunch and drags Ronan along with him.

Setting the table proves to be quite difficult with only one hand, but Adam refuses to be the first to let go, so he makes do. Ronan, though, is much less interested in setting the table than he is in proving that he’s the better boyfriend. He keeps distracting Adam by kissing his hand or brushing hair out of his face. Adam waits until his task is finished before retaliating by peppering kisses across Ronan’s (increasingly pink) face. His lips are pressed to Ronan’s forehead when Blue and Henry finally walk in, pausing in the doorway at the sight before them.

“Are we interrupting something?” asks Blue after a second, amused. Henry just wolf-whistles as he peels off his jacket. Adam can feel his face blushing bright red as he lowers his hands from where they’ve been resting against Ronan’s jaw. Ronan just scowls, his fingers tightening minutely around Adam’s biceps, holding him in place. Something like a challenge glints in his eyes, and Adam feels a swoop of both anxiety and anticipation in his stomach.

“Yes, actually,” Adam says, glancing over at his friends. He can hear Gansey’s voice growing nearer, and he knows that the entire point of all of this is to get back at Gansey, but some part of him wants to shut the door and lock everyone else out. Fake or not, Ronan’s unbridled tenderness and Adam’s hesitant affection don’t require an audience. But he’s committed, now, both to revenge and competition. When he turns back to Ronan, Ronan is already looking at him, dark eyelashes low and inviting. Adam inhales to prepare himself, leans in to brush his lips against Ronan’s, and then changes course at the last second and presses his face into the crook of Ronan’s neck.

Ronan, to his credit, does not stiffen or pause. He just immediately braces himself against the table so that Adam can lean the full weight of his body against Ronan, slides his arms around Adam’s waist to hold him properly. Adam is surprised at how comfortable it is to be wrapped in Ronan’s arms, hidden in his embrace. It should be strange, or at least unfamiliar, but it isn’t. It’s just warm and calming and undeniably _safe._

“Blegh,” Blue says. Against his temple, Adam can feel Ronan’s jaw move, like he’s mouthing something rude at Blue. Gansey’s voice grows clearer and then cuts off abruptly, along with the sound of his footsteps. It’s disturbingly quiet for a moment, and then Gansey clears his throat.

“Don’t you two look cozy?” he says, and Adam frowns against Ronan’s shoulder, because Gansey doesn’t sound uncomfortable or awkward, he just sounds happy.

Adam takes a moment to work his expression into something like bashfulness and then finally pulls away, not stepping out of the circle of Ronan’s arms but lifting his head enough to rest his chin on Ronan’s shoulder. “Oh, hey, guys,” he says casually. “You’re late.”

Gansey’s smile doesn’t falter. It’s alarmingly genuine, like Christmas has come early in the form of Adam and Ronan dating. “We stopped at this charming little gas station on the way back. The woman there makes her own jams and we got to talking about it, she had all sorts of—”

“Oh, come on,” says Blue with a roll of her eyes. She gently shoves Gansey into the room. “Can we talk about this while we eat? I’m starving.”

Gansey nods good-naturedly. “Of course, of course, Jane,” he says, before turning to Maura and Calla. “Allow Henry and I to retrieve the food from the kitchen. Come along, Henry.” He takes Henry by the elbow and they both disappear back into the hallway, leaving the rest of the group to settle into their usual seats at the table.

Adam spends the next hour sitting across from Ronan, their ankles hooked beneath the table, even though nobody can see. They participate in the conversation just as much as they normally would — Ronan interjecting with snarky, oftentimes inappropriate comments, Adam contributing facts and details whenever Gansey takes a pause in his monologuing — and Adam insists on helping to clear the table once everyone is done eating. Ronan doesn’t join him this time, but Gansey does, forever the perfect houseguest.

They bring the dishes into the kitchen and Gansey takes up a post at the sink, leaving Adam to dry and put away the clean dishes. They work quietly for a few minutes, content in their silence the way old friends always are, and then Gansey pauses for just a fraction of a second before saying, “So. You and Ronan.”

Adam blinks. He dries the plate in his hands slowly and looks deliberately in a different direction. “So. Me and Ronan.”

Gansey hums thoughtfully. He rinses a handful of silverware and says, “That was a long time coming.” Adam can feel the tips of his ears turning pink. _What the hell is that supposed to mean?_ he almost asks. _What do you know that I don’t?_

“Yeah,” says Adam, trying to buy himself enough time to come up with a real response. He crosses the small kitchen to place a plate in its cabinet. “Yeah, it kinda was, wasn’t it?”

“I’m happy for you,” Gansey says, absurdly sincere. He turns the water off and dries his hands with a clean dish towel. “Both of you. You’re a good fit. I — I’m happy for you.”

It’s a wonderful, supportive gesture, but all Adam really feels is guilty. He’s lied to Gansey a thousand times before, but this feels different; this isn’t self-preservation or insecurity, this entire thing is about getting back at Gansey for a genuine mistake, and _it isn’t even working_. Somehow, Gansey seems more pleased than ever, so invested in this relationship you would think it’s his own.

“Thank you,” Adam says after a too-long pause. “That means a lot to me. Thanks.”

Gansey just smiles, raising his hand to bump fists with Adam. A second later, Ronan swaggers into the kitchen, Adam’s jacket folded over his forearm. “Parrish,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”

Adam takes his jacket, ignoring the way that Gansey waggles his eyebrows. “Where’re we going?” he asks Ronan, slipping his arms through the heavy denim sleeves. 

Ronan grins. It’s a sharp, electric thing, but the edges are dulled ever so slightly. It’s a sheathed knife, a gun with the safety on. “Let’s go,” he says, and Adam should probably demand a straight answer before getting in the car with Ronan, but instead he just rolls his eyes.

“I’ll see you later,” Adam says to Gansey. They say a brief goodbye to Maura and Calla and then Adam follows Ronan out the door, grabbing his hand roughly and holding it till they part ways to climb into their respective sides of the beemer.

Ronan starts the engine and then sits there for a second while it warms up. It’s cold in the car, and he rubs his hands together, his leg bouncing. Adam pulls his knees to his chest and remains unmoving even when Ronan glares at Adam’s shoes where they rest on his seat.

Eventually, Ronan shifts gears and pulls onto the deserted little street. Adam doesn’t ask where they’re going again; he’ll get his answer when he gets it, probably when Ronan puts the car in park outside of their destination. They pass the turn for Monmouth and Adam gets comfortable in his seat. They merge onto the highway and Adam fiddles with the radio settings till he settles on a station playing Christmas music. Ronan reaches forward to flick it back to his station but decides against it when Adam starts singing along to Jingle Bell Rock.

A little less than half an hour later, Ronan turns into the driveway of the Barns, finally switching the radio off. It’s dark by now, despite hardly being five in the afternoon, but Adam can tell the property is well cared for. The house is just a dark silhouette against a sky that promises rain, but something about the shape is comforting, smoothing over Adam’s edges until he can almost fit here. Ronan pulls up right in front of the porch and cuts the engine, then jerks his head as if to say _follow me_ and steps out of the car.

Ronan’s got the front door unlocked before Adam’s even all the way up the steps. They head inside and Adam is expecting the chill and the stagnant air of a vacant house, but instead it’s warm and cozy and clean in the way that Adam supposes other people’s houses probably were during their childhoods. Ronan catches Adam furrowing his brow at an unfolded throw blanket on the couch and snatches it up, saying, “Oh, that goes in my room. I left it there yesterday morning.”

Adam tilts his head questioningly. “Yesterday morning?” he repeats, following behind as Ronan starts up the stairs. “You were here yesterday morning?”

“Uh, yeah?” Ronan sounds uncertain as he pauses on the landing. He looks at Adam over his shoulder. “You realize I live here, right?”

Adam nearly runs into him. “Huh?” He shakes his head. “I thought you lived at Monmouth.”

Ronan snorts. “Hell, no,” he says, and he starts walking again, heading for the third floor. He leads Adam down the hall and through the last door on the right, into his childhood bedroom.

Adam’s been here once before. It was over a year ago, at Ronan’s eighteenth birthday party. He had been looking for something… tin foil, maybe? And he had stopped to look at a toy car. Ronan had found him sitting on the bed, fiddling with the tiny wheels. He had sat beside Adam and taken the car from his hands, and there had been just a fraction of a second, where he had glanced at Adam’s lips and Adam had thought, _oh, he’s going to kiss me._ But the moment never came; Matthew had appeared in the doorway, asking Ronan some question or another, and Adam had headed back to the party before Ronan had the opportunity to say anything. Something had changed in their friendship after that. Ronan had still come by St. Agnes almost every night, they’d still done dumb teenage boy shit that left them scraped and bruised for weeks afterward, but it had felt different, somehow. Adam didn’t catch Ronan staring at him any less often, but Ronan started looking away again. They didn’t deliberately brush hands anymore. It hadn’t occurred to Adam until he had lost it that he had enjoyed these small, delicate intimacies with Ronan, and after that, it was almost hard to be near him sometimes. And then Ronan dropped out and Adam barely saw him anymore, anyway. Problem solved.

He isn’t expecting all these memories to come rushing back at him at the mere sight of Ronan’s king-sized bed. Adam freezes in the doorway and Ronan flicks on the light and heads directly for the closet, clearly looking for something. The room looks exactly as Adam remembers it, except slightly messier, obviously lived-in. There’s laundry on the floor but the bookshelves aren’t dusty any more. Adam finds himself walking up to Ronan’s desk and opening the top drawer. There’s nothing in it but an excessive amount of different colored Sharpies and a black sweatband. The second drawer is completely empty, but the bottom drawer rattles as Adam opens it, and he finds it full of unlabelled cassette tapes.

“Are you going through my stuff?” Ronan asks from across the room, but he doesn’t sound angry. When Adam glances up, half of Ronan has disappeared from view into the walk-in closet, and there’s a mountain of discarded clothes forming behind him as he tosses things over his shoulder.

Adam turns back to the drawer. “What are all these tapes?” he asks, picking one up and turning it over in his hands. He can’t imagine why anyone his age would possess even one cassette tape, let alone a couple dozen. Well, he was one good idea as to why, but that — that’s neither here nor there.

The room goes quiet as Ronan stops his rummaging. “Tapes?” His voice suddenly sounds tense. “Oh. Those. Um.” There’s a rustling sound as he tries to climb over the piles he’s surrounded himself with. Adam shoves the tapes around curiously, until one near the bottom of the drawer catches his eye. He sees Ronan’s handwriting on the label, so he snags it, then frowns at it.

The phrase _PARRISH’S HONDAYOTA ALONE TIME_ is scrawled in thick, dark letters across the front, and below it, smaller but unmistakably still in Ronan’s writing, reads _A SHITBOX SING-A-LONG_. Adam turns and holds it up, momentarily surprised to see Ronan standing right behind him. “What is this?”

Ronan’s face pales noticeably. “Oh. That.” His eyes are wide, out of place where usually there’s only a glare. He looks like he just caught doing something embarrassing, like singing along to Taylor Swift or having a heart. “It’s, um, a cassette tape.”

Adam arches an eyebrow. “Obviously,” he says dryly. “It’s got my name on it. Did you make me a mixtape?”

Ronan makes a noise like a scoff but with less dignity. “It’s just the Murder Squash Song,” he says dismissively, which is not a _no_. Adam can feel himself blushing and hopes that in the dim golden glow of the overhead light, Ronan can’t see it.

“Why’d you never give it to me?” Adam asks. He shuts the drawer and stands up, the tape still in his hand. Ronan’s gaze flickers to the tape and then back to Adam’s face and then away, conflict and something akin to fear in his eyes. He takes a slow step back, shakes his head, and then turns toward the closet again.

“I dunno,” he says with a shrug as he returns to ransacking his own belongings. “Never found the right time, I guess.” He throws a sneaker over his shoulder and Adam slips the tape into his jacket pocket. He sits on the edge of the bed and waits a few more minutes, till Ronan finally emerges from the closet, victorious. He’s got something dark clutched in his hands, an article of clothing, and he thrusts it at Adam without ceremony.

Adam takes it and shakes it out. It’s a thick coat, heavily lined and obviously waterproof. Adam raises his brows. “Nice coat?”

Ronan flicks the side of his head. “It’s for you, asshat,” he says, like Adam should just know this. “It’s supposed to get all snowy and shit. Everyone’s gonna want to, like, snowball fight or whatever, and your denim jacket’s gonna get soaked through in a second.”

Adam presses his lips into a thin line. “I can’t take this,” he says, holding it out for Ronan, but Ronan just raises his hands and backs toward the door. “Seriously, Lynch, I’m not taking it.”

“The hell you aren’t,” says Ronan, flipping the light switch. The room immediately becomes pitch black. Adam pushes up off the bed and steps into the small patch of light from the hallway, following Ronan. 

“I don’t want your damn jacket,” Adam says. He closes Ronan’s door behind him and stalks after Ronan, down the hall and the stairs and even more stairs. “This probably cost, like, a hundred dollars. I’m not fucking taking it.”

“It doesn’t even fit me anymore,” says Ronan, jumping the last several steps. “Either you take it, or it sits in my closet till the day I die.”

“It can sit in your closet,” Adam says immediately, tossing it down on the couch.

Ronan picks the jacket back up, scowling. “A _good boyfriend_ would take the coat, Parrish.”

Adam reaches out and snatches it back, clenching his jaw. He knows that he could _use_ the jacket, that it will certainly be better both here and back in Cambridge than the denim jacket and the sweater and the layers upon layers beneath that, but accepting gifts is hard. It’s always been hard, and it’s probably always going to be hard. It’s less difficult with Ronan than with Gansey, but only just. The look of triumph on Ronan’s face does nothing to make it any easier to swallow, but Adam bites his tongue, taking deep, measured breaths in an attempt to calm himself down slightly. 

They go back outside and slide back into the BMW, which is still relatively warm from the drive there. Ronan turns the Christmas music back on but Adam doesn’t sing along again; instead, he waits until they’re halfway back to Monmouth and then slips the _SHITBOX SING-A-LONG_ into the tape deck and presses play.

The opening chords of the Murder Squash Song immediately blare throught the speakers. Ronan shoots Adam a death glare but doesn’t move to turn the tape off. When the song ends, it just starts playing again, and it plays through three more times before they pull into the lot outside Monmouth and Ronan parks haphazardly beside the Pig. He reaches forward and turns the music off, and suddenly a thought occurs to Adam.

“Wait,” Adam says, turning fully in his seat. He narrows his eyes at Ronan. “Did we go all the way there just for this coat?”

Ronan smiles unpleasantly and says nothing. Adam slams the car door as hard as he can when he climbs out, but Ronan just smiles wider and hip-checks him as he passes him at the bottom of the stairs, chuckling under his breath.

Adam goes to bed before Ronan that night, and even though he doesn’t fall asleep until well after one in the morning, the other side of the bed is still empty by the time he drifts off. When he wakes up the next morning, however, Ronan is laying on his back on the outer edge of the mattress, on top of the blankets, seemingly asleep. Adam should probably be insulted by the lengths Ronan has taken to avoid even accidentally brushing his shoulder, but it’s too early to feel anything, really, except for the warm contentment that comes with a good night’s sleep.

The moment that Adam sits up, Ronan’s eyes flutter open. The clarity of his gaze betrays just how long he’s actually been awake. For the second day in a row, Adam groans, “Seriously, do you _ever_ sleep?”

Ronan swings his legs over the side of the bed and stretches his arms above his head. “Sleep is for the weak, Parrish,” he says, turning his head this way and that to pop the joints in his neck. Adam wrinkles his nose at the sound. “Merry Christmas Eve Eve.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “That’s not a real thing.”

Ronan stands, scoffing. “You really wanna argue with me about Christmas shit, dude? You asked for help, I’m giving it to you. Take it or leave it. Merry. Christmas. Eve. Eve.”

“Fine,” Adam says, rolling his eyes again. He’s pretty sure he’s going to sprain his eye muscles by the end of the week. “Merry Christmas Eve Eve, man.” He shoves at Ronan’s shoulder and uses the leverage to push himself up off the bed. They knock shoulders as they slip into the main room.

“Good morning,” Gansey’s happy voice calls out. Adam blinks a few times, shocked by the harsh lighting he’s stumbled into. Every bare window pane is a blinding white rectangle, the type of brightness that only comes with a sunrise above several inches of snow. Adam lets out a quiet breath.

“Morning,” says Adam, turning toward the kitchen-bathroom-laundry area. “Merry Christmas Eve Eve.”

Blue, nearly invisible beneath a pile of blankets in Gansey’s bed, makes a disgusted noise. “Ugh, you’re one of _those_ people? I expected better from you, Adam.”

“Merry Christmas Eve Eve!” Henry and Noah shout from the kitchen-bathroom-laundry, their enthusiastic voices overlapping and echoing off Monmouth’s high ceilings. Adam shoots a betrayed glare at Ronan, who just smirks in response.

“You’re such a jackass,” Adam huffs, leaning into Ronan’s space. It’s so early that Ronan hasn’t put up all of his walls just yet; he makes a surprisingly easy target for retaliation. Adam slides one hand down Ronan’s forearm till he brushes against the leather bands there, then twists his fingers in them and tugs. Ronan stumbles forward until there isn’t an inch of space between them, until his breath is ghosting across Adam’s cheekbones. Adam bats his lashes, which feels too silly for words but unexpectedly makes Ronan’s breath catch. “I trusted you.”

Ronan exhales lightly, his free hand coming to rest at Adam’s elbow. “Well, whose fault is that?”

“Gross,” Henry says merrily, passing them as he leaves the kitchen with a mug in his hands. “Get a room, loverboys.” Adam’s fingers twitch as he considers dropping Ronan’s hand, but he thinks better of it. This is still, after all, a competition, and Adam is still very determined to win. He lifts Ronan’s hand till it’s level with his mouth and then kisses the knuckles, just as Ronan had done for him the day before. Ronan flushes crimson all the way down beneath the loose collar of his t-shirt.

“We’ve got a room,” says Adam, not lifting his challenging gaze from Ronan’s face. “If anyone’s uncomfortable, well, you know where to find the door.” Adam watches as the corner of Ronan’s mouth twitches, like he’s suppressing a grin. 

Noah passes them next, a sleepy smile wide on his face. “Adam _Parrish_ ,” he says, mock-scandalously. “I have to admit, I expected less PDA from you. Ronan, sure, I knew he was going to be insufferable. But you…” Noah just shakes his head fondly and sips at the drink he’s holding.

“Wait,” says Ronan, narrowing his eyes at Noah in his peripheral. “You thought _I_ was going to be insufferable? Why the fuck is that?”

Noah shrugs, an unconvincing gesture. “Just, I dunno, you’re so intense, right? You do everything so much. And you’ve liked Ad—” 

“Okay, you can shut the fuck up,” says Ronan, much too loudly. His lack of subtlety is astounding, but characteristic enough. He scowls and pulls his hand away from Adam’s mouth and toward his own, biting down on his leather bands even as they’re still tangled around Adam’s fingers. His lips brush against Adam’s skin for a second and it shouldn’t make Adam feel anything at all, but his brain short circuits all the same. He can’t tell if Ronan is rising to the challenge or simply performing a nervous habit. Maybe neither. Probably both. 

“No, no, keep going,” Adam says, smiling indulgently at Noah. “I’m interested in where that sentence was going.”

Noah just takes a step back, shaking his head. “I’m staying out of this,” he says, and he takes another sip. “It’s not my place to tell other people’s secrets.”

Adam turns his grin back on Ronan. “Come on, _babe_ ,” he says. “Tell me your _secrets_.”

Ronan’s expression is smoldering. “Parrish,” he says, low and warning. “I’m not—”

“Anyway!” Blue yells. She’s now sitting up, wrapped in an armful of blankets and glaring at Ronan and Adam from the small opening for her face. “We’re baking today. Get dressed and get some breakfast, we have to bake and decorate a hundred and twenty sugar cookies before two.”

Adam drops Ronan’s hand and spins to face Blue. “What?”

It’s Gansey who explains, apologetically, still bent over his desk. “Oh, right, yes, I promised the senior center that I would provide Christmas cookies for their residents, and I made a note of it in my pocket planner, which I accidentally left on campus. I’ve been in quite a state without it, actually—”

“He forgot,” Blue cuts in, “and now we all have to pay the price.”

Adam sighs. “Fine. Okay. That sounds about right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Gansey, tilting his head inquisitively. He looks like a confused puppy, not an Ivy League student and heir to a fortune. Adam wants to pat him on the head, but he doesn’t. Gansey would probably enjoy that too much.

“Nothing,” Adam says softly. “I’m gonna make some coffee.” He takes the last few steps to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry doorway and then glances over his shoulder at Ronan. “You want anything, babe?”

Ronan inhales deeply and then holds the breath in his lungs for a second. A muscle in his jaw twitches and he exhales through his nose. “You get the coffee, I’ll make breakfast,” he says, finally unfreezing from his spot in the middle of the room. “And by breakfast, I mean cereal. Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Cocoa Puffs?”

Adam considers. “Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

“Good choice.”

Blue, it turns out, is excellent at kitchen organization and management. “Have you ever considered working in a restaurant?” Adam asks her as she divides them into pairs, and he’s not really joking, but she just rolls her eyes and continues giving out orders. Ronan and Adam are assigned to frosting, because somehow they are the most artistic and least likely to eat all of the fresh sugar cookies out of the group. In Blue speak, this means _Ronan is our most talented artist and Adam will hold him accountable_ , which is unfair and completely accurate.

This assignment means that they won’t be on duty for a solid half an hour, so they clear off a table in the main room of Monmouth and sink down into their respective chairs to wait. Ronan taps his fingers restlessly against the empty tabletop, looking around the room, everywhere but Adam. Adam can’t decide if he feels offended or powerful, the way something as simple as kissing Ronan’s hand has him so on edge, even half an hour later. 

“You okay, Lynch?” he asks quietly after a few minutes, resting his own hands palm-down on the surface of the table. He feels a rush of satisfaction at the way Ronan’s eyes catch on the movement, then thinks better of it and moves his hands under the table instead. 

Ronan blinks a few times. “I’m fine,” he grunts, the staccato of his fingers picking up in speed. “How are you?”

Adam allows himself a small, amused smile. “I’m great.” He feels victorious, even though he’s certain that Ronan is going to get him back soon enough. 

They sit in silence until Blue brings them the first batch of cookies, fresh from the oven. There are two dozen of them, all shaped like Christmas trees, and the moment that they’re in front of Adam he feels overwhelmed. This should feel easy, probably, or relaxing, but all of that victory he felt from making Ronan Lynch squirm leaves his body at once at the mere thought of having to decorate a cookie. It’s ridiculous: he’s Adam Parrish, he can take a car engine apart and put it back together like it’s nothing, he’s got a full ride to Harvard and a 4.0 GPA, and yet he has never decorated a Christmas cookie in his life.

He is, however, an expert at faking it till he makes it. Adam watches intently as Ronan picks up his first cookie and begins tracing the edges in green icing. Ronan painstakingly paints in tiny multi-colored ornaments, holding the tube carefully so as not to disturb any of the other details, and when he’s done he puts it down and seems to notice Adam’s gaze on him for the first time. “What?” he says, like he isn’t convinced that Adam isn’t about to tease him.

“Nothing,” says Adam, shaking his head. He picks up a cookie and a tube of icing. He begins by tracing the outline, just as Ronan had, but it’s not quite as simple as he had expected. His hand shakes slightly, uncharacteristic and unwelcome, and he sighs and sets the cookie down before he can do any real damage to it.

“Something wrong, Parrish?” murmurs Ronan, laser-focused on his own cookie. He frosts a tiny little star at the top and then puts it down and caps his tube of icing. When he looks up at Adam expectantly, one eyebrow arched, Adam can’t help but let out a sigh.

“You make it look easy,” he says quietly. It’s as close to a request for help that Adam Parrish will ever allow himself, and Ronan understands immediately; he snatches up the cookie and sets to work on the ornaments, steady and unblinking.

They settle into a pattern: Adam does his best on the tree-shaped outline and then passes the cookies off to Ronan for detailing. Part of Adam finds it strange to work with a partner, especially the part where his partner is better than he is at their task, but it’s also… not unpleasant. It’s the exact opposite of every group project he has ever taken part in, with Adam getting the smaller workload this time, and Ronan working quietly and diligently. He almost enjoys it, really, as much as he can enjoy being mediocre at anything.

The best part of this set-up, of course, is watching Ronan work, not that Adam would ever admit it. There’s just something about fast-paced, rough-edged Ronan sitting down at a card table and decorating Christmas cookies that sends a thrill through Adam’s veins. Biting his lip in concentration, his pale, thin fingers steady as he diligently frosts tiny little ornaments onto tiny little Christmas trees. Adam feels ridiculous for finding it even the slightest bit attractive, but, well. There isn’t much he can do about it.

It’s past noon by the time the last of the cookies are decorated. Blue packs them up neatly and then attempts to wrangle Adam and Ronan into going with her and Gansey to deliver the cookies to the nursing home, but Ronan insists that someone should stay behind to clean and manages to get them out of it. Henry and Noah decide to tag along with Blue and Gansey, and soon enough Monmouth is still and quiet, leaving Adam and Ronan to work in peace.

Ronan’s idea of cleaning, it turns out, is sitting mostly out of the way while Adam does all of the work. Adam would complain, except Ronan did most of the work with the frosting, so this feels pretty much even. Adam scrubs the countertops down and begins washing the dirty dishes, which consist not only of everything used during baking but also several days’ worth of cereal bowls, coffee mugs, and grimy silverware. When the dish rack is about half full, Ronan sidles up beside Adam quietly and begins drying everything with a clean dish towel, shoving the dishes back into their respective cabinets with quite a few glassy clatters.

“So,” Adam says after a few moments. It feels more awkward to break the silence than it had been to work in it, but it’s too late to turn back now. “What’s on the agenda for this afternoon?”

Ronan wipes a baking sheet down and shrugs one shoulder. “Dunno,” he says noncommittally. “Probably something outside. This is the most it’s snowed in years, everyone’s gonna wanna enjoy it while it lasts.”

Adam nods. He rinses the soap from the last of the silverware and turns off the tap, dropping the silverware in a cup beside the sink. When he turns around and leans back against the counter, Ronan is watching him with muted interest. It looks like he wants to say something, so Adam waits, but nothing is forthcoming. Adam shakes out his shoulders and snatches the cloth from Ronan to dry his hands.

When everyone returns, Gansey gathers everyone in the main room for an announcement. “The snow is nearly four inches high,” he begins. “This is the most it’s snowed here in over a decade. We’d be fools not to take advantage of it.”

“Just say it, man,” says Ronan, eyes glinting. Whatever _it_ is, Adam is certain Ronan’s look spells trouble.

Gansey grins. It’s a rather mischievous grin, wholly out of place on Gansey’s golden boy face. It’s a Ronan-like expression, far too lethal and predatory, and Adam’s stomach flips in anticipation of Gansey’s next words.

“Snowball fight.”

In hindsight, Adam probably should have insisted on being on Ronan’s team.

Mathematically speaking, it sounded like a great idea to put Blue and Ronan on one team and everyone else on another. Factoring in Adam’s extensive knowledge of his friends, however, this was a bad call. It’s too late to do anything about it now, though — Adam dives for cover behind the Pig and a snowball smashes into a window right where his head had been only a second before.

“Hey!” Gansey yells from where he, too, is hiding behind the Pig. “I thought we said not the cars!”

“It was an accident!” Blue shouts back, not sounding apologetic in the slightest. “Tell Adam to stay still and maybe next time your car will be spared!”

Gansey turns to Adam, eyes pleading, and Adam scoffs in disbelief. “I’m not taking a hit for your car,” he hisses, scooping up some snow in his gloved hands and shaping it into something reminiscent of a sphere. “Let’s just end this before they break a window or something.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” asks Gansey. He forms his own snowball and then glances up at the side mirror near his head. Adam looks up, too, and they watch as Blue and Ronan’s reflections communicate in hand signals, like they’re FBI agents or Boy Scouts. Adam rolls his eyes.

“We have to make them surrender,” he says, like that’s a possibility. Neither Blue nor Ronan is the surrendering type, but simple facts like that have never stopped Adam Parrish before. “We need to meet back up with Noah and Henry. Where are they?”

Gansey shifts so he’s holding his snowball in one hand and then tugs the glove off the other with his teeth. He fishes in his pocket for a moment before pulling out his phone, then unlocks it and texts Henry one-handed. Within seconds, he has a reply. “Henry is behind the Mustang and Noah is behind the BMW,” he whispers. Another message appears on his screen. “Henry’s cold and thinks it’s time we give up.”

Adam shakes his head. “Tell him to stick it out,” he mutters, glancing back up at the mirror. He can’t see Ronan anymore, only Blue, and it puts him on alert. “Ask if he can see Ronan from where he is.”

Gansey complies and asks Adam’s question, leaning in a few seconds later to show Adam the screen. _He’s going around the building_ , Henry texts. _Coming around behind you._

Adam nods and pushes the phone back toward Gansey. “Tell him we need a distraction,” he breathes, already forming another snowball. “I need Blue’s back turned long enough to get underneath the stairs before Ronan comes around.” Gansey quickly sends off the text, and he immediately receives a thumbs-up emoji in reply. There’s barely a second between the text coming in and Henry Cheng’s battle cry as he jumps up from behind Noah’s car and charges at Blue.

“Go, go, go,” Gansey hisses, pushing at Adam, and Adam grabs his snowballs and stumbles across the open lot toward the stairs. He sneaks a glance over his shoulder at Blue, but she’s got her hands full with Henry and Noah driving her back against the Hondayota. Adam slips under the stairs unnoticed, then backs into the shadows and waits.

It’s only a few more seconds before Ronan’s face appears around the corner of the building. He peeks out at the lot warily, narrowing his eyes at the Pig, where Gansey sits alone and waves his re-gloved hand merrily. Ronan raises his gaze to the scene unfolding between Blue, Noah, and Henry, who have all dissolved into absolute chaos. Blue smushes a snowball into Henry’s hair and he stumbles backward, shaking his head vigorously.

“I’m out!” he announces dramatically, his whole body shuddering. “That’s it, I’m done, goodbye, I will see you all in Hell.” He heads for the stairs and dodges one last snowball from Blue before slamming the door behind him. 

Blue is just distracted enough by Henry’s abrupt departure that Noah manages to pull back her jacket and shirt and stick a handful of snow down her back. She shrieks indignantly and kicks him in the shin. “Ugh!” She unzips her jacket and pulls it off, then tugs at the back of her shirt in an attempt to dislodge the snow there. “Oh, fuck y’all! I’m done too!” She shoves Noah’s shoulder hard and then stomps up the steps after Henry, muttering under her breath. 

“Fuckin’ Sargent,” Ronan grits out, still unaware that Adam is only a few feet to his left. He walks out into the open and immediately descends on Gansey, who is too busy tapping at his phone to notice the imminent danger till it’s much too late. A snowball hits the side of his face and he looks up, bewildered, then shoves his phone down the front of his jacket to protect it from the storm of snow and fury that Ronan is unleashing on him.

“Wait!” Gansey shouts, raising his hands to cover his face. Ronan does not wait; he pelts Gansey with snowball after snowball, until he runs out, and by then he’s so close that he just starts scooping up handfuls of snow and slush and flinging them at any part of Gansey he can reach. “Wait, wait, Ronan, wait!”

“Just surrender,” says Ronan, his voice strained. He easily dodges Gansey’s one snowball and then kicks a spray of snow across Gansey’s lap. “It’ll all be over, dude, all you have to do is give in.”

“Fine!” Gansey says. He pushes himself into a standing position and then raises his empty hands, his teeth clattering loudly. “I give up! I give up! Jesus Christ.”

Even facing the other direction, Adam is sure that Ronan is grinning. “That’s all you had to say, man,” Ronan says, and he wipes one more handful of snow through Gansey’s hair before patting him on the shoulder and pushing him in the direction of the stairs. “By the way, where’d Parrish run off to?”

Gansey just frowns at Ronan, flicking a bit of ice off the shoulder of his puffy jacket. “I’m not helping you,” he sniffs, leaning heavily on the railing. “Nobody else should have to suffer at your hands ever again.”

Ronan just snorts, then turns around and eyes the empty lot. “Oh, Parrish,” he calls out, stooping down to shape another snowball. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Adam stays put. He’s been friends with Ronan long enough by now to know that there are two possibilities here: one, Ronan grows impatient while looking for Adam and makes a mistake, or two, Ronan has enough time to think and comes up with a ridiculously clever plan. It’s a risky move, but Adam is willing to bank on the first possibility. Ronan may be a wild card, but Adam isn’t; given enough time, he _will_ come up with a better plan.

In the end, he’s unsure of just how much _better_ his plan is, but it’s cold and he’s tired of standing beneath the stairs watching Ronan stalk around the parking lot. Adam waits till Ronan’s close by with his back turned, then runs full speed at him and tackles him to the ground.

Ronan makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat as he goes down, then swears loudly and extensively. He ends his tirade with a vehement, “Jesus _fuck_!” and attempts to dislodge Adam from where he’s straddling Ronan’s thighs, pinning his wrists to the ground. “Mother of fucking _Christ_ , Parrish, you could have killed me!”

Adam scoffs. “Oh, please,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not that big.”

Ronan smirks up at him, lopsided. “You could say that again.”

“Grow up,” Adam mutters, shaking his head. He shifts his weight slightly, uncomfortable where his knees are digging into the pavement. It occurs to him just how close he and Ronan suddenly are, the heat of their bodies separated only by a half-dozen or so layers of clothing. It shouldn’t make Adam’s face flush bright pink, but it does anway. Ronan just continues to smile up at him. “What?” Adam snaps.

“I was just wondering,” says Ronan leisurely, “what exactly your plan is, here?”

Adam narrows his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Ronan says, looking much happier than someone pinned down against gravel and snow ever should, “I suppose you want me to give up, right? But why exactly would I do that? I could just lay here all day, I don’t care. You don’t have a free hand to shove a handful of snow in my face or whatever you think will send me over the edge.” He pauses for dramatic effect, wriggles slightly just to prove his point, and says, “We’re at an impasse.”

Adam frowns. Loathe as he is to admit it, Ronan is right. He considers this, and then considers it some more, and he’s still considering it when Noah appears in front of him with a bucket.

“Oh!” says Adam. Truth be told, he had completely forgotten that Noah was still in the game, but now he’s grateful to see his friend. “Noah, help me out here, I need—” His request is cut off by Noah dumping a bucketful of melting snow over both Adam and Ronan.

“What the _fuck_ ,” says Adam evenly, his hair starting to drip. He lets go of Ronan’s hands and sits back, but Ronan is too shocked to push him off.

“Czerny,” Ronan grits out. “I am going to kill you.”

Noah just smiles and throws the bucket on the ground behind him. “I win!” he says.

“Noah,” Adam says, his entire body shuddering dramatically. “ _We are on the same team_.”

To his credit, Noah looks guilty. Victorious, sure, but also guilty. “Whoops,” he says, grimacing slightly. He crosses his hands behind his back. “Um, sorry.”

In response, Adam just shakes his hair out, water droplets and chunks of ice spraying out in every direction. Ronan finally finds it in himself to sit up, still not pushing Adam off his legs, but panting like he’s just run a mile. Adam watches water drip beneath the collar of his jacket. Ronan looks up at him, a few snowflakes clumped in his lashes, and Adam realizes what he’s waiting for.

“Oh, fine,” sighs Adam, relenting more out of the kindness of his heart than anything else. “I give up. I’m done.”

Ronan smiles gleefully and finally shoves Adam over. “Me too,” he says, happy to give up now that he’s outlasted Adam. He stands up, takes a few steps toward the stairs, then thinks better of it and turns and offers his hand to Adam. Adam takes it and allows himself to be pulled up, then follows Ronan inside, locking the door spitefully before Noah can join them.

Later, long after they’ve all showered and changed into dry clothes and eaten dinner, they settle in for a movie night. Blue and Gansey sprawl on the couch, legs intertwined and Blue’s head on his chest, and Henry and Noah collapse together into a recliner, a blanket pulled over their laps. Adam considers curling up in the plush armchair where he spent most of his afterschool Monmouth hangs, but then Ronan takes him by the hand and pulls him down on a loveseat, and that’s that.

Gansey chooses the movie, something in black and white that everyone in the world except Adam has seen before. It’s less of something to pay attention to and more of a backdrop for whatever romantic shenanigans everyone is engaging in; Blue seems to be falling asleep against Gansey, tracing lazy, abstract patterns with her finger where the fabric of his shirt stretches across his chest. Henry and Noah are talking lowly, their words unintelligible beneath the 1940’s dialogue on the television screen. Adam is perfectly content to lean against the arm of the loveseat and take his own nap, but Ronan has different plans. Unlike Adam, he has not forgotten their main goal for the week: make Gansey sick with how much they love each other. So he manhandles Adam and maneuvers him around until Ronan is stretched across the entire loveseat, his feet hanging down off the arm, and Adam is laying on his side, pressed between Ronan and the back cushions. He feels his face flushing bright red as his head is pushed down to rest on Ronan’s shoulder, but in the darkness of the room, he’s pretty confident Ronan doesn’t notice.

“This shit’s got nothing on Die Hard,” Ronan murmurs in Adam’s ear, and Adam breathes out a laugh and relaxes. Ronan is warm and steady, anchoring Adam before he even realizes he’s adrift. That’s something Ronan has always been good at, he supposes: recognizing Adam’s needs and meeting them before even Adam notices them. It should be disconcerting, or aggravating, but really it’s just baffling — how can somebody, anybody, be so good at reading another person? And not just _any_ person, but Adam Parrish, unknowable Adam Parrish, who plays his cards so close to his chest that even he can’t see them all? Maybe Ronan’s brain is just wired to understand complicated, ever-changing rules and translate borderline nonsensical statements (after all, Latin was his top subject in school). Maybe Adam’s just not as unknowable as he thinks.

But two can play at this game. Game? That feels a little gratuitous. It’s evolved past the hand of Go Fish it started out as. Now they’re in that no man’s land of _are you for real I’m for real but only if you’re for real_. If it’s still a game — if it was ever a game — it’s Russian Roulette. Or, less dramatically, the highest-stakes game of poker Adam’s ever dared to buy into. They’re both asking a question, and neither of them are willing to answer first. Ronan, who has never failed to call a bluff in his life, is holding out. Adam, an emotional card shark if there ever was one, refuses to call. He isn’t even sure of the cards he’s holding, but he keeps raising his bets anyway. He slings an arm around Ronan’s middle and tangles their legs, squirming closer. Ronan’s breath stutters so fleetingly that Adam isn’t sure that he didn’t imagine it.

His deaf ear is pressed to Ronan’s chest so that he can conceivably hear the movie — not that he needs to, with the closed captions on, not that he wants to, with the brief summary that Ronan gave him — but he can feel the rhythmic _thump thump thump_ of Ronan’s heartbeat beneath his cheek. It’s both comforting and dizzying, to be this close. It lights him up inside and soothes an ache so old he barely registers it anymore. 

It occurs to Adam that the others aren’t even looking at them, they’re sleeping or cuddling or watching the ridiculous movie playing out across the television screen, but Ronan uses his free hand to drape a blanket over them anyway. Not a game. Adam finds Ronan’s hand in the dark and twines their fingers, reveling in the way that Ronan immediately rubs his thumb over Adam’s.

Not a game.

They remain like that for the entire movie, all two hours of it, only shifting when Ronan decides to run a hand through Adam’s hair or Adam acts on his impulse to trace the lines of Ronan’s palm. It’s painfully domestic, and despite his best intentions, Adam feels himself falling asleep about halfway through. When he blinks himself awake, the screen is black and everyone has disappeared but Ronan, whose face is unreadable as he watches Adam sit up.

“What time is it?” Adam croaks, rubbing one eye. 

Ronan stretches his arms over his head and eyes the analog clock on the wall. “Almost midnight,” he yawns. “You’ve been asleep for fucking ever.”

Adam frowns. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Ronan shrugs his shoulders as he sits up. “You were tired,” he says, almost defensively. “I didn’t wanna interrupt your precious beauty sleep.”

Adam snorts at that, pushing himself up off the loveseat. “I’m gonna go to bed,” he says, heading for the door, and he doesn’t expect Ronan to follow but he does. They collapse onto the bed within a few inches of each other and then crawl beneath the covers, both far more tired than they realized before. Adam pulls the comforter up to his chin and he’s out within seconds, before Ronan’s even got the light off.

When he wakes up a few hours later, there’s a sort of pressure behind him and around his waist, and he freezes for a moment before he realizes what it is: it’s Ronan, chest pressed to Adam’s back, arm wrapped around him loosely. He can feel warm puffs of breath at the back of his neck, the steady rise and fall of Ronan’s chest against his shoulder blades. It’s not much different from their position on the couch earlier, but here, alone in Ronan’s bed, it feels far more intimate. Adam doesn’t dare move an inch, lest he accidentally wake up historically light sleeper Ronan. He slips back to sleep easily, feeling much safer than anyone else might in Ronan Lynch’s arms.

When he wakes up for good the next morning, Ronan is not, as Adam expected he might be, gone. In fact, he isn’t even awake yet, still breathing softly against the column of Adam’s spine. Adam allows himself a few minutes — okay, maybe half an hour — to enjoy the warmth and solidity of Ronan’s presence before finally lifting Ronan’s arm gingerly, trying to crawl out of bed without waking him.

It doesn’t work out particularly well. Ronan makes a muffled _ngh_ sound and yawns, his nose pressing against Adam’s neck, and then he startles backward. “Oh, shit,” he mumbles, sliding his leg out from where his calf was between Adam’s. “Uh, shit, sorry, Parrish—”

Adam sits up and reaches over, draping the palm of his hand over Ronan’s face. “‘S fine,” he says sleepily. “You’re warm. It’s fine.”

They’re both quiet as Adam grabs his stuff and heads to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry to brush his teeth and shower, and when Adam is done, he finds Ronan dressed and sitting on the couch with two steaming mugs. Wordlessly, he holds one out for Adam, and Adam furrows his brows but takes it. He peers into the cup, deems it safe for human consumption, and then takes a sip. It’s coffee, exactly as he likes it: no sugar, way too much milk. He doesn’t bother repressing a smile.

“Thanks,” he says, and Ronan just nods. Adam sits down on the other end of the couch and they drink their coffee in strangely cold silence. Adam isn’t entirely sure what’s the matter; did he make Ronan uncomfortable? Does Ronan think he made _Adam_ uncomfortable? Both ridiculous possibilities, but possibilities all the same. The rest of their friends wake up slowly, drowsily, and begin their mid-morning bustles toward coffee machines and cereal bowls and too-cold showers. It almost reminds Adam of his dorm back in Cambridge, if everyone on his floor had to shower less than ten feet from where they made their breakfasts. 

It’s a slow day at Monmouth, with no Gansey-scheduled activities to keep them occupied. They watch a few silly Christmas specials on TV and play a few boardgames and Gansey pulls several bottles of wine out of thin air, proposing an absolutely ridiculous drinking game for that evening that involves Welsh king trivia and superstitions and facts and memories from their own lives. Even Adam can’t keep up with the rules Gansey lists off, which says a lot about the logic (or lack thereof) of the game, but nobody particularly cares. They scrounge up lunches from the groceries that Gansey somehow found time to buy, then head to Fox Way for dinner, and they’re only back at Monmouth for five minutes before Gansey is popping the first bottle open and pouring everyone a generous glass of wine.

Before they start, Adam heads to the kitchen to grab himself some water, nearly colliding with Ronan in the doorway. They’ve both been quiet throughout the day, somewhere between giving each other space and actively avoiding one another, and Adam puts up a hand to stop him. “Wait,” he says, and Ronan pauses, jaw clenched. “Are we good?”

Ronan smiles sardonically. “Of course we’re good, Parrish, why do you ask?” His voice is a challenge, and it’s one that Adam intends to rise to. _Not a game_ , he reminds himself, leaning against the frame of the door.

“Can you cut the shit for one second?” Adam hisses. “Can we talk like adults just _once_ , for the love of God?”

“You wanna talk like adults?” Ronan crosses his arms over his chest. “Okay, dude, let’s talk like adults: I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing anymore. Happy?”

Adam narrows his eyes. “ _You_ don’t know what the fuck we’re doing anymore? You seemed to know exactly—”

“Oh, boys,” Henry’s voice interrupts, calling out suggestively. Adam spares him an irritated glance and immediately regrets it; wagging his eyebrows suggestively, Henry lifts his chin as if to say _look up_ , and when Adam does, his next words die in his throat. Hanging in the doorway above him, forest green and impossible to ignore, is a sprig of mistletoe.

Ronan’s eyes flicker to the plant and then back to Adam’s face, only a few inches from his own. Suddenly he’s no longer Ronan Lynch, former Aglionby bad boy, rebel without a cause, drag racer extraordinaire; he’s Ronan Lynch just finding out he’ll be sharing a bed with Adam, Ronan Lynch staring in horror at the _Shitbox Sing-along_ in Adam’s hands. Panicked, tense, frighteningly vulnerable. He glances at Adam’s lips and then up, Adam’s lips and then up.

“When did that get there?” Adam asks the room at large, scowling. The only reply he receives is an innocent shrug of the shoulders from Gansey, which Adam doesn’t believe for a moment. It may not have been his idea, but Gansey had certainly authorized it, and judging by the way he’s looking at Adam now, it was for this exact purpose. Adam turns to face Ronan fully and blinks at him a few times, trying to convey a question with his eyes: _what do you want to do here?_

Behind them, Noah yells, “Come on, just kiss already!” Blue, Henry, and Gansey all join in the cheering. Much to Adam’s dismay, they even begin to chant _kiss, kiss, kiss_ like a bunch of middle schoolers, which is ridiculous for a number of reasons, least of which being _they are all operating under the assumption that Adam and Ronan have already kissed several times._

“Lynch,” Adam breathes, reaching up and resting one hand on Ronan’s shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting manner. He smooths his thumb over the taut fabric. “You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to.”

Ronan frowns. It’s a much more familiar expression on his face than the pure bewilderment of before. He glances over Adam’s shoulder at their friends, still shouting encouragement, and then looks Adam in the eyes head-on. “Ready for it?”

Adam swallows. Is he? Who knows? Certainly not him. Fake dating Ronan Lynch has been all fun and games, but he never thought they’d get to the point where they had to _kiss_. If this were a game of chicken, this would be the point where Adam jumps off the tracks and lets the train pass him by, horn bellowing. This would be the point where he snatchsd his hand back, just in time for the knife to stick in the paneling of the tabletop. This would be the point where he steps back and gives up the game.

But this isn’t a game of chicken, this is _Ronan_. It was never a game, and Adam knows it.

“I’m ready,” he says, and he means it.

One corner of Ronan’s lips quirk up, almost smirking but not quite. He cups Adam’s face. “‘Tis the damn season,” he mutters, and then he kisses him.

If someone were to ask Adam to describe Ronan in a few words, he would have his pick of adjectives. _Recalcitrant. Obnoxious. Arrogant. Immature. Impossible._ If pressed, he could begrudgingly add a few more pleasant options, like _loyal_ and _fearless_. Now, he has a few more descriptors to add to the list, words that have surely never been used to describe Ronan till this exact moment: _sweet, chaste, hesitant._ It’s a quick press of his lips to Adam’s and then he’s stepping back, so un-Ronan-like that it’s nothing for Adam to loop an arm around his neck and pull him back in. Ronan responds immediately and unthinkingly, like this is the most natural thing in the world, like he could do it in his sleep. Maybe he could. Maybe Adam wants to find out.

They only kiss for another moment before their friends’ cheers erupt behind them, drawing Adam out of his reverie. He flinches slightly at the explosion of sound and sucks in a small but audible breath. Ronan peers at him from beneath dark lashes, then swipes a thumb over the jut of Adam’s cheekbone. He opens his mouth, maybe to say something, maybe to kiss Adam senseless, then blinks a few times and takes a step back.

“Ronan,” says Adam, so quietly he isn’t even sure Ronan hears him.

Ronan exhales so fully that his shoulders deflate slightly. Again, he looks like he’s about to say something, but he just shakes his head and crosses the room in a few giant paces. On his way to the door, he swipes up his leather jacket and slips it on, then leaves without a word.

The room is silent for several long, earth-shattering moments, and then Gansey speaks up, his voice thick with anxiety. “Parrish?”

Slowly, Adam turns around and faces the room. He can feel that his brows are furrowed and that he’s frowning, but he’s too occupied with his thoughts to fix it, to rearrange his features into something more relaxed and tell Gansey some silly lie to explain away whatever just happened. Whatever is up with Ronan. Instead, he walks to the loveseat and grabs his untouched wine glass from the coffee table. He downs the drink in one go, pretending that he doesn’t have everyone’s eyes on him, and then pours himself a second glass and drinks it all, too.

“Is everything okay?” asks Blue as Adam pours himself his third glass in just as many minutes.

Adam clears his throat, presumably to tell them _yes everything is great thank you for asking_ , but the words that actually leave his mouth are, “Ronan and I aren’t dating.”

He immediately hides his face behind his third glass of wine, drinking it to avoid having to deal with his friends’ emotions. Even so, he can still hear Henry’s gasp, Noah’s low _huh?_ , Gansey’s sigh. Only Blue is silent, and when Adam gulps down his last mouthful and sets the glass carefully on a coaster on the coffee table, she is the only one in the room who looks entirely unsurprised.

“Did you break up?” asks Henry, but the skepticism in his voice gives him away. He realizes now that Adam and Ronan have been lying; he’s trying to give Adam an easy out. And Adam appreciates that, but he doesn’t exactly deserve it.

“No,” Adam sighs, and he feels a tiny bit lighter now, like the physical weight of an untruth has left his shoulders. Or maybe he’s just drunk — he’s never been drunk before, he’s not really sure what it’s supposed to feel like. Either way, he sits back on the loveseat and pulls a throw blanket over himself, takes a deep, steadying breath, and then tells them everything. He leaves no stone unturned; he starts not with the bed-sharing situation but instead with his high school crush, with their almost kiss in Ronan’s childhood bedroom. He explains the plan, the revenge, he tells them about Die Hard and Ronan staying out all night and going to the Barns. Everything. They’re all quiet the entire time, not a single interjection or interruption to the story, until finally Adam draws to a close and shrugs his shoulders shakily. “Well,” he says, his voice catching ever so slightly. “That’s it.”

Blue is the first to speak. “No, that’s not it,” she says. Henry, Noah, and Gansey all nod in agreement. “I mean, come on. You know that’s not it.”

“Huh?” The three drinks have certainly hit by now, and Adam is far from eloquent. “I don’t — what do you mean? That’s it. That’s the story. I don’t know what else… what else you want from me?” His head is fuzzy, and he can’t quite decide if he likes it or not. He wants another glass. He wants to go to sleep. He wants Ronan to come back.

Gansey leans forward and picks up his own glass. “It doesn’t matter what _we_ want,” he says pointedly, a thoughtful crease between his brows. “What do _you_ want?”

Adam frowns. What does _he_ want? Everything. He wants everything. He wants more hours in a day so that he can get more work done and sleep longer. He wants a car that doesn’t threaten to give up the ghost every time he shifts gears. He wants a home to return to every school break, and a family to embrace him. He wants _everything_.

Does _everything_ encompass Ronan, as well? Does he want _everything_ with Ronan? Sure. But that doesn’t mean that he can have it.

“I don’t know,” he lies, because he’s afraid of what he might say if he decides to give them the truth.

Blue clicks her tongue. “It’s okay to lie to us, Adam, but I hope you’re honest with yourself, at least.”

With that, the matter is settled. They move effortlessly onto the drinking game with rules Adam cannot follow and the concept that didn’t even make sense sober. Adam attempts to play, anyway, if only as an excuse to drink more wine, and spends the night staring at the door, waiting for Ronan to return. He stays and waits even after everyone goes to bed, even after Gansey begins to snore softly from the center of the room. The long hand of the clock goes around and around and around and finally, at half-past three in the morning, the front door creaks open and Ronan steps inside.

His jacket is dusted with rapidly-melting snow, white against the black leather and then gone. He closes the door softly, glancing over at Gansey as if to ensure that he hasn’t awakened his friend, then shrugs off his damp jacket and steps out of his boots. When he turns and starts toward his bedroom, he finally notices Adam watching him from the loveseat, and he does a startled double-take and swears under his breath.

“Jesus, Parrish,” says Ronan, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. His eyes dart to Gansey again and he lowers his voice. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

Adam blinks owlishly. He knows that he had something important to say, but he can’t quite remember it now. “Wanted to make sure you got home safe,” he says, which is true but isn’t the sentence he had queued up during his wait. “Where’d you go?”

Ronan’s jaw clenches. He crosses his arms and then uncrosses them, opting instead to shove his hands in his pockets faux-casually. “Church.” He pauses, leans forward on the balls of his feet, and then narrows his eyes at Adam. “Are you drunk?”

“Hm?” Adam picks at the hem of his blanket, avoiding Ronan’s eyes. “Yeah, uh — yeah, a bit.”

The noise Ronan lets out is somewhere between a snort and a sigh. “Okay. Come on, Parrish.” He jerks his head in the direction of his bedroom. “It’s sleep time.”

“Nnh,” says Adam eloquently. He swallows and shakes his head, then stops because the movement makes him nauseous. “No, wait, I wanted to talk to you—”

Ronan crosses the room in half a dozen steps. “Nope,” he interrupts, and he takes Adam’s throw blanket and tosses it away before Adam has a chance to stop him. “We can talk tomorrow. When you’re sober. Right now, you’re going to bed.” Without further preamble, he slips a strong arm around Adam’s waist and hauls him up, guiding him in the direction of Ronan’s room.

“Ronan,” Adam says. He’s not sure what he’s asking for. Ronan doesn’t reply, just leads Adam through the door and sits him down on the edge of the bed, nudging the door closed with the back of his foot. Adam sinks down on the mattress and frowns, then slowly rolls over toward the wall so that Ronan can get in bed, too.

While Adam’s back is turned, Ronan changes into pajamas, and then the mattress dips as Ronan kneels momentarily on the outer edge. “Under the blankets,” he says firmly, tapping two fingers against Adam’s shoulder blade, and Adam drowsily complies and crawls beneath the covers. Ronan lifts up the corner of the comforter and slides underneath it, over the cover sheet, and falls still. Adam waits a second and then turns over till he’s facing Ronan, nearly a foot of empty space between them. Ronan is lying flat on his back, eyes wide open, staring tersely at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” says Adam. He isn’t entirely sure what he’s apologizing for, but it feels like the right move. At least, as much as anything can feel like the right move when he’s this drunk.

For some reason, though, Ronan winces. “Don’t,” he says, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Adam tries and fails to repress a yawn. “But you’re mad at me,” he says, sounding more like a sleepy child than he ever did as an actual child.

“What?” Ronan rolls his head to the side and squints at Adam in the darkness. “I’m not mad at you,” he says, like it should be obvious. “But I’m not having this conversation right now. Go to sleep.”

Just like that, Adam’s eyes slip closed. Like his body was waiting for permission and he just didn’t realize it. There’s so much that he wants to say to Ronan, but he’s a little delirious and a lot drunk, and every word he manages to conjure up slips away from him before he can spit it out. He exhales through his nose and presses half his face into Ronan’s pillow, willing himself to piece together even one coherent sentence. All his brain manages to come up with is, “Goodnight, Ronan.”

“Goodnight, Adam,” Ronan responds quietly, his words almost lost as Adam drifts off into a heavy, drunken sleep.

Adam wakes up on Christmas morning with a hangover and something like a plan.

Predictably, Ronan is not around when Adam awakens, but there is a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen on the bedside table. Adam takes the medicine in the hopes of warding off his monstrous headache and then drains the glass, thankful for both Ronan’s reluctant care and the light-blocking curtains over his windows. Even just the strip of glaring winter daylight on the carpet is enough to make Adam groan and squeeze his eyes shut, laying back and burrowing his face in a pillow.

A few minutes later, there’s a loud knock on the door, and then it swings open to reveal Gansey’s smiling face. “Up and at ‘em, Parrish!” he says, far too chipper for Adam’s liking. “It’s Christmas!”

“I’m aware,” Adam mumbles, squinting at Gansey and then closing his eyes again. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

He sits up as delicately as he can manage, rubbing at his temples, and then maneuvers his way across the room with his eyes half-closed. He digs around in his bag until he finds something he assumes (or, rather, hopes) is clean and dresses, not minding that his socks are mismatched. Blue might appreciate it. He takes a deep breath, composes himself to the best of his abilities, and then steps into the main room.

“Adam!” says Noah immediately, raising a cup in his direction. “You look like shit!”

“Thanks,” mumbles Adam, flipping him off. He stumbles into the kitchen and makes himself a black coffee, stronger than he probably should, and by the time he’s forced it down, his headache is finally subsiding. He rinses the cup and then trudges back out to the main room, where his friends are all curled up, drinking their own coffees.

“Now that Parrish has finally elected to join us,” says Henry as soon as Adam drops onto the loveseat, “it’s present o’clock.” He wastes no time in reaching under the tree and plucking out a small box wrapped in flashy silver paper, then presents it to Noah. “For you, my love.”

Noah smiles and takes the box in his hands. “Thank you,” he says before he even begins to peel back the tape carefully. He unwraps the gift like he’s planning on saving the paper — and considering its shininess and the fact that this is Noah, it’s entirely possible. Beneath the wrapping paper, the box is velvet and hinged, the type that jewelry comes in. Noah opens it with more care than Adam’s seen him put into just about anything, and with slender fingers, he plucks out a single dangly earring.

“Babe,” Noah says, turning an adoring look on Henry. “It’s perfect. Thank you so much.” To demonstrate how much he loves it, Noah puts it in his ear right then, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if his ear had been pierced prior to this morning. Adam determinedly turns his attention away and leans forward, grabbing another gift and tossing it to the rightful person.

Over the next hour, they unwrap a multitude of strange, sentimental, and outrageous gifts. Expensive pens and cufflinks, yards of tulle and chiffon. A pair of hiking boots, a laptop case, a spiked choker. A leather-bound day planner. A calendar with pictures of baby farm animals. New bluetooth headphones and a Taylor Swift CD. Finally, Adam picks up the bag that contains his gift to Ronan and hands it over, fidgeting nervously.

Ronan looks into the bag before unearthing the gift. Adam bought it months ago, the first time he saw it in the window of an antique store in Cambridge. It’s been sitting at the bottom of his sock drawer since before Gansey and Ronan visited him in October, and after this week, there’s a new layer to it. Ronan scowls, scoops up the gift, and says, “Is this a _Walkman_?”

“It is,” says Adam proudly. “It’s vintage. Look inside.”

Unenthusiastically, Ronan complies, and then his scowl deepens. “Did you make me a _mix tape_?”

Adam feels himself smiling despite himself, the tips of his ears burning. “I did.”

Ronan’s eyes flicker, and then he drops the Walkman back into the bag abruptly and gets down on his hands and knees. He crawls halfway underneath the Christmas tree and fishes around till he finds what he’s looking for, a rectangular box wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with twine. In Sharpie, Ronan’s familiar scrawl reads simply _PARRISH_. He sits back on his haunches and tosses the gift in the general direction of the loveseat, and Adam barely catches it before it hits the ground.

He unwraps the gift meticulously, unwilling to so much as tear a corner. Once the paper is peeled away, the box is plain and wooden, delicate hinges holding the top in place. Adam lifts the top and then pauses, staring at the inside in surprise. When he looks up, Ronan is still frowning, but there’s a slight blush forming on his cheeks, too.

“Is this…” Adam tries, but he can’t finish his own sentence.

Ronan knows what he means. “Yeah.”

The box doesn’t actually contain anything, but the inside is intricately carved and lined with expensive fabric. It’s meant to hold tarot cards, and one look at it tells Adam that it was handmade. He arches an eyebrow at Ronan. “Did you…?”

“Yeah,” Ronan says again, blushing deeper this time.

Adam swallows hard, sets the box down carefully on the empty cushion of the loveseat, and stands up. He walks past his friends, who are all watching carefully, and grabs Ronan by the elbow and hauls him up. “Come on,” Adam says, heading for the door. He takes a second to slip on his boots and the jacket from the Barns, then walks out the door without another word. He doesn’t look over his shoulder to see if Ronan is following, but when he’s about halfway down the stairs, he hears the door shut and footsteps trotting down the steps behind him. As soon as they reach the bottom of the stairs, Adam whirls around levels Ronan with a _look_.

“What?” asks Ronan flatly. His tone of voice doesn’t fool Adam, though, not when his shoulders are tense beneath his jacket and his eyes are so alert. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket and meets Adam’s gaze. “Do you have something to say, Parrish?”

“Yeah,” Adam says, sounding more confident than he feels. “I don’t wanna fake date you anymore.”

If possible, Ronan grows more tense. He squares his shoulders, clenches his jaw, and shrugs, aiming for casual and missing by several miles. “Sounds good,” he snarls. “Anything else?”

Adam nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I wanna date you for real, jackass.”

Ronan freezes. “What?” 

“Here’s the thing,” says Adam, tripping over his words. “I know I go to Harvard and you live here, and I know you don’t do casual relationships or whatever, and I know that you’re the worst sometimes, but I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m in. If you’re in, I’m in. I’m tired of acting like this is a game, because it isn’t. Not for you and definitely not for me. And I’ve been, been, been waiting for you to call my bluff but if you’re not gonna do it, then fine, I’ll do it myself. Bluff called.”

For several unending seconds, Ronan just stares at him, expression dangerously neutral. “Okay,” he says slowly, his voice rough. “Are you done?”

Adam almost flinches at the blunt rejection. “Yeah,” breathes, deflating slightly. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“Cool,” Ronan says, nodding, and then he steps forward and kisses Adam.

A new word for Adam’s ever-growing Encyclopedia of Ronan Lynch: _reverential_. Ronan kisses worshipfully, which is unsurprising but entirely welcome. One of his hands comes up to cup Adam’s face tenderly, the other arm winding around his waist, and Adam loops an arm around Ronan’s neck and pulls him in closer. It’s their last kiss turned on its side; no dare, no audience, just Ronan’s breath on his lips and Ronan’s hand at the small of his back and _Ronan_ , more alive than anyone else Adam has ever met.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Ronan mumbles, unwilling to pull back enough to speak clearly. “ _I don’t wanna fake date you anymore_. Jesus Christ, Parrish.”

Adam laughs into his mouth. “Well, don’t worry, you certainly got me back,” he murmurs. “ _Are you done?_ I had a god damn heart attack.”

Ronan snickers. “You deserved that,” he says, resting his forehead against Adam’s for a moment. “You’re such a bastard, God.”

Adam just smirks. “Takes one to know one, Lynch.”

“So,” Adam begins. It occurs to him that he doesn’t actually know what he’s going to say. _Remember how Ronan and I said we were dating, but it turned out we were just pretending to date to get revenge on Gansey, and in retrospect that didn’t even really make any sense? Well, now we’re really dating._ “Um—”

Ronan takes pity on him, or maybe he’s just impatient. “Parrish and I are dating now. For real.” He takes Adam’s hand in his as if to prove the point, and Adam squeezes thankfully.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” asks Henry, leaning against the back of the couch. “Are we sure this isn’t just another harebrained revenge plot?”

“Who the fuck are you calling harebrained?” Ronan says gruffly, but there’s no real bite to it. “You can believe it because I’m saying it, and I don’t lie.”

Blue hums disagreeably. “If we’re counting omissions, you’re the biggest liar here, Lynch.”

Ronan glowers at her. “Omissions aren’t lies, they’re omissions. If they were lies, they’d be called _lies_ ,” he says fiercely. 

“Oh,” scoffs Blue, “you can’t be serious—”

“You know I am.”

“Anyway!” exclaims Gansey, silencing both Blue and Ronan. “Thank you for sharing this wonderful news with us, you two. We’re very happy for you both, and it’s good to see that everything worked out in the end.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Blue dismissively, but there’s a small smile on her face. “Now, we need to get going. Mom is going to be pissed if we’re late to open presents.”

Gansey swipes up his keyring and tosses it in a high arc. Blue catches it easily and then raises an expectant eyebrow. “I’ll be down in a second,” he tells her. “Would you get the car warmed up for me?”

She takes a moment to consider this, then sighs and relents. “Fine. But if you’re not down in five minutes, I’m leaving without you.” She tugs on Henry and Noah’s shirts as she passes them, and they follow her out the door into the cold, bright Christmas afternoon. 

Gansey watches them leave, then turns back around and smiles broadly, clapping Adam on the shoulder. “I’m glad the two of you have figured everything out. For real, this time,” he says, alarmingly genuine. 

Adam’s first instinct is to dismiss him, but he pushes past that and tries for something more vulnerable. “Thanks,” he says, surprising himself with how much he means it. He feels as though the moment is in danger of growing too serious, so he adds wryly, “You know, it never would have happened if it hadn’t been for your shitty couch.”

“Hm?” hums Gansey, his smile faltering slightly. He blinks and looks away, slipping his hands into his pockets. 

Ronan leans forward, eyes narrowed. “What did you do?” he asks, the arm around Adam’s waist tensing incrementally. Gansey opens his mouth, closes it with a soft _click_ , and then opens it again.

“I may have shared an untruth or two with you both.” He speaks slowly and calmly, the same voice that Adam has heard him use on Ronan and Declan too many times to count. Adam does not particularly enjoy being on this side of it. “About the couch situation, that is.”

Adam and Ronan both turn to glare at the couch, the offending object. Being inanimate, it’s not at fault in the slightest, but in Adam’s experience, it’s much easier to be angry with a piece of furniture than to be angry with Gansey. “The couch was a totally viable option to sleep on, wasn’t it?” deadpans Adam.

Gansey smiles his politician smile and nods. “Yes, but you see, somebody had to do _something_.” Before Adam can ask him to elaborate, he continues, “Jane said that it was uncouth to meddle in your friends’ romantic pursuits, but you have to understand, the two of you have been dancing around each other for far too long. It was time I took matters into my own hands.”

A week ago, Adam would have turned around and walked out of Monmouth without another word. Now, he just sighs and shakes his head. “Has anyone ever told you,” he says, unable to repress a fond smile, “that you are the worst?”

Gansey just nods sagely. “Yes,” he says. “Several times, in fact.”

Ronan’s glower is wasted on Gansey, but that’s never stopped him before. “You sneaky fuck,” he says, half annoyed, half admiring. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Gansey’s grin widens. He’s far too proud of himself, but Adam figures they’ll let him have this. “You’d be surprised,” he says. “I have quite a few tricks up my sleeve.”

Adam rolls his eyes, but he knows that his expression is more affectionate than anything. “Maybe quit while you’re ahead, Gans.”

“Fine,” says Gansey with a self-satisfied sigh. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go gloat to Jane. She owes me ten dollars.”

This, out of everything, is what drops the smile from Adam’s face. “Y’all _bet_ on us?” he asks incredulously. “Seriously?”

“We did. And I won.” Gansey takes a step backward, and then another. “Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to take her money. I just like the satisfaction of being right.” He pauses, takes his jacket down from its hook and slides it on, then adds, “The real reward here, of course, is the knowledge that I helped my two dearest friends overcome their anxieties and finally act on their feelings—”

“Oh, shut up,” Adam interrupts. His tone is too good-natured to be misconstrued. “Go brag to your girlfriend about how your ridiculous fake _there was only one bed_ scheme actually worked. Ronan and I will be right behind you guys.” Gansey nods, gives a two-fingered salute, and then backs out the front door.

As soon as the door is closed, Adam lets out a hysterical laugh he hadn’t realized he was holding in. “Oh my god,” he wheezes, nearly doubling over with laughter. “He is so ridiculous. _We_ are so ridiculous. Oh my God.”

Ronan runs a calming hand up and down Adam’s back. “Pull yourself together, Parrish,” he says, but Adam can hear the smile in his words. When Adam straightens back up, he lets Ronan pull him in, wraps his arms around Ronan’s waist and buries his face in the crook of his neck. Ronan exhales slowly.

“So,” Adam murmurs, his lips ghosting over the warm skin of Ronan’s throat. “How do you propose we get revenge on Gansey for _this_?”

Ronan lets out a sharp, surprised laugh. “Oh, I have a few ideas.”

**Author's Note:**

> well, there was... that! there are some parts of this i'm not super happy with but i got hyped up and posted the whole thing so i hope y'all enjoyed at least a few bits and pieces!!! the VERY loose premise of this fic is actually based on [this tumblr post](https://leet911.tumblr.com/post/634364492505071616/i-recently-started-working-in-hospitality-and) and a joke i made about it to a friend, then i just added tropes and taylor swift references until i couldn't stand to look at the google doc anymore. anyway! wishing you all a lovely end to your year and an even lovelier 2021!!! as always you're welcome to find me on tumblr and confess your love to me, i'm @sleepsongs and if you talk to me i will send you lots of yellow emojis :) p.s. title comes from the taylor swift song of the same name, stream evermore! sending everyone lots of love and positive energy!!!! ♡♡


End file.
